Louis Lortie review: New album, In Paradisum, makes apparent the importance of Fauré’s piano works

Louis Lortie’s new album, In Paradisum – A Fauré Recital, makes apparent the importance of the composer’s piano works to 20th Century music

Louis Lortie         In Paradisum – A Fauré Recital           Chandos, out now

Rating:

Gabriel Fauré wrote some toothsome melodies in stuff such as his Requiem, or the Cantique De Jean Racine, and the delicious Pavane. Fauré’s real claim to fame, though, is his piano music, where there are precious few of what an old teacher of mine used to dismiss as ‘errand boy whistles’. 

Instead, there are lots of complex harmonies that take his late piano music, composed around the time of the First World War, to the very edge of atonalism.

Daniel Barenboim once wisely observed of Fauré’s contemporary, Claude Debussy, that without him, the 20th Century – musically, of course – could not have happened. It’s also true of Fauré’s piano music, as is apparent in this second volume of Louis Lortie’s projected complete survey of Fauré’s piano music.

On In Paradisum, Louis Lortie expertly charts Fauré’s four-decade journey from the Ballade (1877-79) through to the complexities of the tenth Barcarolle (1913) & the 13th Nocturne (1921)

On In Paradisum, Louis Lortie expertly charts Fauré’s four-decade journey from the Ballade (1877-79) through to the complexities of the tenth Barcarolle (1913) & the 13th Nocturne (1921)

Here he expertly charts Fauré’s four-decade journey from the Ballade (1877-79) and the first Barcarolle (1881), through to the complexities of the tenth Barcarolle (1913) and the 13th Nocturne (1921).

Fauré, who died aged 79 in 1924, kept on reinventing his compositional style, despite all the distractions of a distinguished career as a musical educator, culminating in running the Paris Conservatoire from 1905 to 1920. His creative life was, for much of his career, confined to the sidelines, given the financial necessity to teach, and to play the organ.

Fauré was an outstanding organist, who rose to the very top, as the organist of La Madeleine in the heart of Paris for a decade (1896-1905), only resigning when he took on the Conservatoire. And yet, sad to record, in all that time this prolific composer never wrote a piece for organ solo, which surely shows what he really thought of the instrument. The piano was where Fauré felt truly at home, and where he could, creatively, be himself.

The piano was where Fauré felt truly at home, and where he could, creatively, be himself yet he resisted any temptation to repeat the melodic charm he readily displayed in his other music

The piano was where Fauré felt truly at home, and where he could, creatively, be himself yet he resisted any temptation to repeat the melodic charm he readily displayed in his other music

This album does not offer the easy listening of Fauré’s former teacher and lifelong friend Camille Saint-Saëns, who – throughout his long, parallel career – invariably took the easy way out, pandering to his public, rather than stretching them. 

In his piano pieces, Fauré resisted any temptation to repeat the melodic charm he readily displayed in other music, as is well illustrated by Lortie’s own transcriptions here of two pieces from the Requiem, notably the beautiful Pie Jesu, which begins the album.

Tough-going some of this may be, but Fauré’s piano music is required listening for anyone truly interested in the development of keyboard music.