GABRIEL FAURE: Concertante Works = Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 19; Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 111; Berceuse for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 16; Elegie for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 24; Violin Concerto, Op. 14; Romance for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 69; Fantasie for Flute and Orchestra, Op. 79 – Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabedian, violin/Henri Demarquette, cello/Juliette Hural, flute/Jerome Ducros, piano/Orchestre de Bretagne/Moshe Atzmon – Tympani 1C1172, 63:59 [Distr. by Qualiton] ****:
Herein we have a delightful concept: organizing Gabriel Faure’s diverse works for solo instruments and orchestra (rec. 2005) under one roof, as it were. A group of enthusiastic young French musicians, under the direction of Hungarian maestro Moshe Atzmon with the recently formed (1989) Orchestra of Brittany performs, in opus-number succession, each of Faure’s concertante works which are rare enough in the composer’s catalogue, since he seems to have eschewed the orchestra in favor of salon and chamber music ensemble. The curio among these pieces is surely the brief fifteen-minute Op. 14 Violin Concerto–ostensibly a juvenile effort–yet rife with sweet melodic invention close to the spirit of Saint-Saens. Each of the youthful soloists plays masterfully, nary a blemish nor a false note.
The two brief cello pieces–the Elegie (1883) and the Romance–will be somewhat more familiar to connoisseurs of Faure’s fine art, the former a magnificent dark hymn that moves into sunshine, orchestrated by Faure himself. The latter (1894) employs a sweet lyric Faure used in his incidental music for Shylock, Op. 57, later orchestrated by Henri Busser. Violin enthusiasts know the Berceuse as a familiar encore piece, orchestrated by Philippe Gaubert in 1913. The Fantasie for Flute (1898) entered the repertory with orchestra in 1957, after having been orchestrated by orchestrated by Louis Aubert. In two sections, the piece becomes quite lively, invoking the French horn to join in the aerial revelries. The marvelous Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra (1918) originally was scored for two pianos, and its orchestral rendering–with impetuous horns and insistent tympani– deprives it of some textural novelty. I recall a particularly thrilling rendering of this suave, often passionate piece by Grant Johannesen. Jerome Ducros does the honors here, as he does in the equally luscious Ballade, Op. 19 (1879). Like his compatriots Beroff and Collard, Ducros establishes an Aeolian rapport with the orchestra, brilliant, fluent, sparkling with éclat. Faure claimed to pianist Alfred Cortot that the Ballade–whose demure beauties were first revealed to me by Robert Casadesus–owes Wagner’s Forest Murmurs from Siegfried debts for its inspiration.
Exquisitely engineered and balanced by Alexander Van Ingen, this disc should augment any lover of Faure’s oeuvre, and in exceptionally vivid and luminous sound.
–Gary Lemco
