Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 02/13/1981, uploaded on 07/04/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Among Gabriel Fauré’s idols in the realm of piano music was Frédéric Chopin and the titles of his works reflect this source of inspiration—Nocturne, Barcarolle, and Impromptu. Despite his tendency to temper his music with a classical restraint, Fauré’s piano music is by no means easy to perform, and on one occasion the great Franz Liszt, while attempting to perform one of Fauré’s works, even remarked that he had “run out of fingers.” For much of his career, Fauré was an organist, and though the piano was his medium of choice for keyboard music, he nonetheless wrote with a proclivity towards the fingerings and idioms more comfortable for an organist than a pianist. Lending even more difficulty was the fact that Fauré was also ambidextrous and equally inclined to place a melody in the left hand as in the right, or in notes alternating between the two.

Fauré’s piano output spans many decades of his career, from the 1860s almost to his death in 1924. Most are written in the forms mentioned above, but among them are also the valses-caprices, preludes, a ballade, and other dances. Of the impromptus, he composed six in all, which bookend a period lasting nearly three decades with the first three appearing the early 1880s and the last three in the latter part of the first decade of the 20^th century. The second impromptu, in F minor, was composed in 1883. It is a light and energetic piece in the style of a tarantella. The sprightly opening section is contrasted by a more lyrical episode in the parallel major. A sort of moto perpetuo persists through much of the piece. It begins as part of the principal idea in the opening, but transforms into an undulating and legato accompaniment in the episode. Each thematic section is given a second statement, but it is the F major episode that remains to close the piece.      Joseph DuBose