Gabriel Fauré (1845 –1924) Fugues from 1869, Written While He Was in Rennes

FAURÉ Four Hand Piano Music Dolly • Masques et bergamasques Pierre-Alain Volondat Patrick de Hooghe publisher’s, not Fauré’s choice. These include two Fauré wrote his Symphony in F or Suite d’orchestre, Gabriel Fauré (1845 –1924) fugues from 1869, written while he was in Rennes. Opus 20 , between 1867 and 1873, an attempt at writing Piano Music for Four Hands Two of the pieces, the Capriccio and Improvisation, of this kind that must have convinced him that his real Souvenirs de Bayreuth • Huit pièces brèves, Op. 84 were originally intended as sight-reading tests for the talents lay elsewhere. The first movement of the Conservatoire, while others may have had an earlier symphony was arranged in 1893 by Léon Boëllmann Masques et bergamasques, Op. 112 • Allegro symphonique, Op. 68 • Dolly, Op. 56 origin. The Fantaisie is redolent of Fauré as a song for piano duet, although the work was first heard in The sixth and youngest child of a father with for such a position. His association with the composer, as is the Adagietto , while the Fugues are 1873 when Fauré and Saint-Saëns performed it in a two- aristocratic connections, a former teacher, employed in Conservatoire, where his pupils over the years included predictably formal in structure. Allégresse , marked piano version that has not survived. The third and fourth the educational inspectorate and then as director of a Ravel, Koechlin, Enescu and Nadia Boulanger, led, in Allegro giocoso , again shows the composer’s gift for movements provided material for the Gavotte and teachers’ training college, Gabriel Fauré was 1905, to his appointment as director, in the aftermath of melody, here over a rippling accompaniment, and the Ouverture of the Masques et bergamasques suite. The encouraged by his family in his early musical the scandal that had denied the Prix de Rome to Ravel. set ends with a D flat major Nocturne . Allegro symphonique is in sonata form, with an ambitions. His professional training, designed to allow He remained in this position until 1920, his time for Fauré wrote Masques et Bergamasques in 1918 in asymmetrical first subject and a second, lyrical theme, him a career as a choirmaster, was at the Ecole composition initially limited by administrative response to a commission by Prince Albert I of Monaco duly developed and heard in recapitulation. Niedermeyer in Paris, where, by good fortune, he met responsibilities, although he was later able to devote for music to accompany a choreographic divertissement , The Dolly Suite was written between 1893 and Saint-Saëns, who was then teaching the piano at the himself more fully to this, adding yet again to the to be staged in April 1919. For this purpose, apparently 1897 for piano duet and the whole set of pieces was school. This was the beginning of a relationship that repertoire of French song, with chamber music and a transitory one, he was able to use again a number of dedicated to Hélène Bardac, Dolly, daughter of Emma lasted until the death of Saint-Saëns in 1921. works for piano. earlier compositions. As the title indicates, the Bardac, who, as a singer, had exercised a strong Fauré completed his studies at the Ecole Fauré’s musical language bridged a gap between divertissement was to be based on poems by Verlaine, fascination over Fauré. She was subsequently to leave Niedermeyer in 1865 and the following year took up an the romanticism of the nineteenth century and the world adapted for this purpose by René Fauchois, contrasting her banker husband to bear a child to Debussy, whom appointment as organist at the church of St Sauveur in of music that had appeared with the new century, the Théâtre Italien actors Harlequin, Gilles and she later married. Their daughter inspired Debussy to Rennes, turning his attention increasingly, during the developing and evolving, but retaining its own Columbine, on an idealised Cytherean island, with their write his own Children’s Corner . Fauré’s suite starts four years of this provincial exile, to composition. fundamental characteristics. His harmonic idiom, with formal theatre audience, figures from the aristocratic with a Berceuse , a familiar cradle-song. Mi-a-ou , with After similar less important appointments in Paris, in its subtle changes of tonality and his gift for melody, is world of Watteau, now watched by the actors from their its editorial indication of a cat, was originally designed 1871 he became assistant organist at St Sulpice, later combined with an understanding of the way hiding-place, for whom they unwittingly provide a as an evocation of Dolly’s brother Raoul, Messieu Aoul , moving to the Madeleine as deputy to Saint-Saëns and contemporary innovations might be used in a manner performance. The evocative title comes from the second while Le jardin de Dolly (Dolly’s Garden) provided subsequently as choirmaster, when Théodore Dubois completely his own. line of the first poem of Fêtes Galantes , Clair de lune , Dolly with a particularly evocative and beautiful New succeeded Saint-Saëns in 1877. Marriage in 1883 and It was together with André Messager that Fauré the source of inspiration for the whole work. From the Year present in 1895. The Kitty Valse , a birthday the birth of two sons brought financial responsibilities travelled in 1879 to Cologne to hear Wagner’s Das original eight movements Fauré derived a suite of four present in 1896, refers, in its original title, to Raoul’s that Fauré met by his continued employment at the Rheingold and Die Walküre and later to Munich to hear movements. These start with an Ouverture that was pet dog, and Tendresse (Tenderness) was originally Madeleine and by teaching. At the same time he wrote a the complete Ring Cycle . There were further Wagnerian originally the Intermezzo de symphonie written in dedicated to Adela Maddison, wife of a music- large number of songs, while remaining, as always, journeys, including, in 1882, a visit to London to hear Rennes and first performed there in 1868. This provides publisher, the apparent object of Fauré’s affections at intensely critical of his own work, particularly with the Ring Cycle and, again with Messager, in 1888 to an apt and lively opening, to be followed originally by this time and perhaps in later years, after she had left her regard to compositions on a larger scale. Bayreuth itself, to hear Parsifal , a work that affected the Pastorale , that is placed later in the Suite . The husband and settled in Paris. The suite ends with an The last decade of the nineteenth century brought him deeply. It was with Messager, in a much lighter Menuet was written in 1918 and 1919 and is in a stately excursion into the world of Spain. Fauré more public recognition. In 1892 he became vein and in the same year, that he collaborated on Baroque tempo. The Gavotte dates from 1869, while the inspector of French provincial conservatories and four Souvenirs de Bayreuth , a series of five short piano duets Pastorale , completed in the early months of 1919, is years later principal organist at the Madeleine. In the in the form of a quadrille, based on favourite themes aptly placed at the end of the Suite , to which it provides Keith Anderson same year he at last found employment as teacher of from The Ring , some of which are transformed into an element of unity with a brief reference to the opening composition at the Conservatoire, the way now open to something less instantly recognisable. theme of the Ouverture . him after the death of the old director Ambroise The Eight Pieces, Opus 84 were assembled for Thomas, who had found Fauré too much of a modernist publication in 1903, with titles that were the Patrick de Hooghe Gabriel Fauré (1845 –1924) The Belgian pianist Patrick de Hooghe was already forged an international career, collaborating with Klavierwerke zu Vier Händen playing the concertos of Mozart, Mendelssohn and musicians such as the violinist Augustin Dumay, the Saint-Saëns at the age of ten. At eleven he made his cellist Frédéric Lodéon, the Soloists of the Souvenirs de Bayreuth • Acht kurzen Stücke, op. 84 début on Belgian television and was noticed by the Concertgebouw and Pierre-Alain Volondat. Playing a Allegro symphonique, op. 68 • Dolly-Suite, op. 56 celebrated teacher Eduardo del Pueyo, who wide range of repertoire from Bach to Takemitsu, Masques et bergamasques: Suite, op. 112 subsequently taught him at the Conservatoire Royal in Patrick de Hooghe has appeared throughout Europe, Das Leben Gabriel Faurés, geboren 1845 und alles verdankte. Brussels. Now based in France, Patrick de Hooghe has North America, Japan and Russia. gestorben 1924, erstreckte sich von der Frühromantik Mit zwanzig Jahren arbeitete Fauré kurzzeitig als eines Chopin, über die Spätromantik Mahlers, die Organist in Rennes in der Bretagne, kehrte aber bald Atonalität Schönbergs bis hin zu den ersten Klängen nach Paris zurück. Er war Soldat im deutsch- Pierre-Alain Volondat Coplands. Der kontinuierliche und drastische französischen Krieg und wurde nach dem Verlust des Pierre-Alain Volondat was born in 1962 at then has enjoyed a career that has taken him to success Geschmackswandel berührte Faurés Musik erstaunlich Krieges Mitglied einer neuen patriotischen Gruppe, die Vouzon, Loire-et-Cher. He studied at the Orléans in most countries of Europe as well as in the Far East. wenig, die sich von monumentalen Großformen sich der Förderung französischer Musik verschrieb. Conservatoire and then at the Conservatoire National In technique and musical understanding, Pierre-Alain fernhielt und in den kleinen, intimen Genres der Das neue Jahrhundert brachte Fauré die Supérieur de Musique in Paris, where he won first Volondat acknowledges a debt to Vera Moore, Kammermusik, Klaviermusik oder des Lieds am besten Anerkennung einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit und prizes in harmony, chamber music and piano.

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