Œuvres pour violoncelle et piano

Description

Gabriel Fauré’s work for cello and piano plunges us into the heart of the mystery contained in this Master’s music: intimately uniting sensuality and spirituality, it is supremely balanced music, speaking both to the soul and to the body, and bringing to the highest level the qualities of refinement and subtlety attributed to French music. We had long known the most famous pieces: “Après un rêve” — a melody whose sublime interpretation by Régine Crespin particularly inspired us — the Sicilienne, the Élégie, the subtle and candid Berceuse; we had both often played the Second Sonata op. 117 with its immense melodic arcs, its slow movement of rare depth and sobriety, its whirling finale, and then together we discovered the riches of lesser-known works: the voluptuous Romance, the humorous Sérénade, but above all the dark First Sonata op. 109, an overlooked masterpiece. This dense, tormented sonata conveys as closely as possible the composer’s distress during the First World War and reveals to us little-known aspects of Fauré’s genius: fury rubs shoulders with revolt, and rarely has the composer shown such a dark face as in the first movement. (Nicolas Bringuier)