Irène Duval & Angus Webster - Fauré and Friends (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

For me, art, especially music, consists of elevating ourselves as far as possible above what is.’ Gabriel Fauré Fauré is one of my favourite composers. His music transports us to an ideal world of multiple reflections and harmonic nuance, in a continuous musical and rhythmic flow. The warmth of his music sings, touches, consoles, fills with joy, exults! He is the composer who has accompanied me the most over these past five years. 2024 marks the centenary of his death, and with this programme, I wished to celebrate him along with single works by his friends Georges Enescu, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Reynaldo Hahn.

The first of these, Reynaldo Hahn’s Romance in A major, was composed around 1901; it is dedicated to Gaspar Marcano – Hahn’s fellow-Venezuelian compatriot, author of works on pre-Columbian Venezuela. Born in 1874 in Caracas, Hahn was four years old when his family moved to France. He showed an astounding early talent for music; composing his first and successful cycle of melodies, “Les chansons grises” on poems by Verlaine from age 12 and 15. Singing always held an important place in his musical life (he himself had a beautiful baritone voice); as one plays his music, one can easily imagine him in a Parisian salon, singing at the piano, ‘a cigarette at the corner of his mouth’ as described by Marcel Proust, his friend and onetime lover… The present Romance seems to be his first piece for violin, a sonata and concerto for the instrument following some 25 years later. The melody is simple, charming, and melodious, the violin and piano conversing in an expressive dialogue.

Hahn had a great admiration for Gabriel Fauré. He spoke of him beautifully when introducing four concerts dedicated to Fauré’s music in 1914, at the Université des Annales.

Irene Duval, violin
Angus Webster, piano

Tracklist:
01. Hahn- Romance in A major
02. Fauré- Berceuse Op. 16
03. Fauré- Andante in B flat major, Op. 75
04. Enescu- Violin Sonata No. 2- I. Assez mouvemente
05. Enescu- Violin Sonata No. 2- II. Tranquillement
06. Enescu- Violin Sonata No. 2- III. Vif
07. Saint-Saëns- Berceuse, Op. 38
08. Fauré- Romance in B flat major, Op. 28
09. Fauré- Violin Sonata No. 2- I. Allegro non troppo
10. Fauré- Violin Sonata No. 2- II. Andante
11. Fauré- Violin Sonata No. 2- III. Finale. Allegro non troppo
12. Fauré- Morceau de lecture


Thanks to the Original customer!