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Could it perhaps be that the music is deathly dull ? I'm sure it's my fault, but all Faure's chamber music leaves me cold.
It did me, too, Ff, until about five years ago when I heard the Domus recording of the two Piano Quartets and the scales (and, indeed, arpeggios) fel from my ears. Pure joy ever since.
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
It did me, too, Ff, until about five years ago when I heard the Domus recording of the two Piano Quartets and the scales (and, indeed, arpeggios) fel from my ears. Pure joy ever since.
Exact same thing happened to me, ferney... That CD, plus the advocacy of a friend, occasionally of this parish. As verism says, the fleeting, elusive shifts and resolutions and sequences of subtle emotion are pretty intoxicating.
I've caught up with this BAL... I welcomed the lengthy introduction, as despite being 'into' Fauré, string sonatas tend to be my last port of call and I didn't know this piece at all.
I get a lot out of the review. It reminded me how there are relatively few performances of solo string works that appeal to me, on the basis just of the player's sound (coupled of course with the recording quality, some of them sounding horribly botched to me). I sadly couldn't listen to the tragic Thomas Igloi's sound for more than a few seconds, for example.
Gendron and Isserlis (with Adès) leapt out as the versions that appealed to me... Ditto Ms Duchen, as it turned out.
The review reminded me too how, ironically, the French seem of late to have developed a different sense of how Fauré chamber music should go from 'us'. Having listened to a couple of the French radio 'Jardin des Critiques' programmes over the years on Fauré chamber works, the performances that appealed (on a blind tasting basis) to those French critics were the more hot-blooded, over-wrought ones, like those that didn't fare very well on this BAL. And I must say that's not how I like my Fauré either.
The British seem to do Fauré rather well, in fact ...
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
Hence the cheering "Fauré's A Jolly Good Fellow ..."
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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