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From: ellis@flairvax.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Gabriel Faure
Message-ID: <293@flairvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Dec-83 23:36:41 EST
Article-I.D.: flairvax.293
Posted: Mon Dec 12 23:36:41 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Dec-83 01:45:56 EST
Organization: Fairchild AI Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 22

Can anyone recommend recordings of several works by this somewhat neglected
composer, namely:

    1. Nocturnes (for piano)
    2. Both Piano Quintets
    3. String Quartet

For those who aren't familiar with Faure, this French composer wrote mostly
delicate (but often intense) chamber music towards the end of the 19th
century. No symphonies, piano concerti... or anything even close to a crowd
pleaser. At a time when bombast and overblown romanticism was at its
height, his quiet, introverted music eloquently reaffirmed principles of
balanced understatement, and served as a basis from which Debussy was able
to form Impressionism. Sorta like Throbbing Gristle...

I've never heard the nocturnes, but have been told that they should appeal
to anyone burnt out on too much Debussy/Ravel piano music; the quartet and
one of the piano quintets were written when Faure was very old, blind, and
deaf, and have an otherworldly quality similar in ways to the late Beethoven
quartets.

-michael