FAURE: Ballade, Op. 19; Mazurka, Op. 32; 4 Waltz-Caprices; 9 Preludes, Op. 103 – Jean-Claude Pennetier, piano – Mirare MIR 072, 77:00 [Distrib. by Harmonia mundi] **** :
Recorded in January 2008, this is the first of four volumes of Faure piano music [Integrale de l’oeuvre pour piano] to be inscribed by pianist Pelletier, who brings a vivid, relaxed, and wonderfully flexible panache to this most intimate of keyboard composers. Pelletier opens with the solo version of the D-flat Major Ballade, Op. 19 (1879), a liquid, pearly work in three parts, a poetic and fanciful moment that already points to Faure’s unique, harmonic contours and modal sonorities. Having been introduced to this tender piece by another Gallic master, Robert Casadesus, I find Pelletier’s version entirely amiable, soft, evanescent, silken.
The Op. 32 Mazurka of 1883 (the same opus as a set by Chopin) plays at gentle syncopations and hesitations on the upbeat, an angular, rather brittle sense of melody ceding its pride of place to the metric acrobatics. A more forceful middle section erupts, its arpeggios spread over several octaves. The music trickles, scales, and runs upward in a skipping pattern, closer to Satie and Chabrier than to the composer’s usual idiom.
Liszt (by way of Schubert) must be the inspiration for Faure’s sets of Valse-Caprices–each approximately the same length in performance–the first penned in 1883. It works for the salon or the music hall. The Op. 30 spins, reels, then thunders in mercurial temper, a combination of virtuoso vigor, poetic nostalgia, and improvised vagaries. The 1884 Op. 38 combines Chopin’s vibrant lyricism and the elegant, whimsical eclat of Saint-Saens. The middle section might be a distant cousin of the noel that haunts Chopin’s B Minor Scherzo. The last pages ring with a carillon of bells that point directly at Ravel. The Op. 59 (1893) reverts to Liszt’s protean surfaces; but the harmonies, too, prove equally unstable under a skittish melodic line. The “raindrop” effects and audacious harmonic progressions reminisce to Chopin and Brahms and look ahead to Ravel and Frank Martin. The Op. 62 (1896) has a fin-de-siecle, flamboyant, cabaret quality about it; half German waltz, it is Schubert but now angular and sarcastic.
Pelletier ends this recital with the 1909 Preludes, as revolutionary in their quiet, subtlety expressive ways as Debussy’s Premier Livre published the same year. The opening D-flat Major is an expansive yet soberly restrained piece, discreet n its modal ambiance. The C-sharp Minor is a running toccata, anxious, even somber. The G Minor enters an exotic, languorous world, a nocturne maybe visited by Klimt in a soft mood. The A Major offers us a siciliano in modal harmony. The D Minor, a favorite of Robert Casadesus, has drama and passion, forged in triplet figures. Chopin’s B-flat Minor tonality meets with Bach polyphony in the sixth; the strict canon in octaves could be mistaken for one by Shostakovich. No. 7 in A Major enjoys a luster to make Rachmaninov envious, not to mention The C Minor has elements of a Spanish-style toccata, Albeniz or Falla in staccato. Finally, the E Minor, a stately, poised lament in autumn, likely Faure’s eulogy on his lost hearing. All auspicious under Pelletier, a master colorist in his own right.
–Gary Lemco
