Three years ago, in August 2011, the pianist of the Anglo-Swedish
Kungsbacka Piano Trio, Simon Crawford-Phillips was interviewed by Jeremy
Siepmann. He answered the final question 'What's in the pipeline for the
Trio now?' with 'I don't know what the next recording project will be. We've
been talking about maybe Martinů trios or even Fauré piano quartets, either
or both of which would be fun.' If the former project has not yet come to
fruition, the latter now has. In October 2013 the first of Fauré's Piano
Quartets (Op.15), a marvellous work, was issued by Naxos (
8.573042) together with the revised version of the
Piano Trio Op.120 (the one with violin) and three fillers, his
Pavane,
Vocalise and
Sicilienne. This therefore
is the follow-up disc which has the same personnel as well as the same
format of Piano Quartet, the same Trio but in Fauré's original version for
clarinet. Again, there are a couple of short fillers.
Fauré was not only a fine pianist and organist but also a highly
influential figure in the field of French musical education, eventually
(1905) as head of the Paris Conservatoire, where Ravel, Koechlin, Enescu and
Nadia Boulanger were among his pupils. As to his own significance as a
composer, his almost eighty years led French music along the path from the
depths of Romanticism to post-First World War Modernism. The composer
himself was the pianist at the first performance of the second Piano Quartet
in January 1887 at the Société Nationale, which indicates his prowess as a
pianist ... and that of its dedicatee Hans von Bülow. Crawford-Phillips
rises expertly to its demands in his forthright account right from the
opening G minor figurations. Fauré's harmonic language is imbued with a
great deal of subtlety, his key relationships often either take circuitous
routes or they are blatantly juxtaposed with instances of breath-taking
beauty. Two such moments stand out, a felicitous switch of key in the first
movement (at the 6th bar of B and at L) and in the slow movement at letter
C, as the viola (Philip Dukes) moves the music from A major to F major,
achieved by a slight hesitation in the phrasing. What impresses in the
playing of all the musicians on this superb disc is the absence of any
struggle between piano and strings; it is not a case of the piano playing
against the three string players.
The far earlier
Three Songs without Words and the later
Berceuse for violin and piano - the piano duet version of which
will take those 'sitting comfortably' to the wireless programme 'Listen with
Mother' - are charming and sensitive. The Clarinet Trio adds new dimensions
to make an interesting alternative version of that with violin. The sheer
enjoyment manifest on this disc marks it out as chamber music played at its
highest level.
Christopher Fifield
