Gabriel Faure. Complete Works for Cello and Piano

This output is significant as the first recording of the Faure cello and piano works on period instruments with open gut strings on the cello and a historical French piano of the era, an Erard grand from 1885, housed at RBC. Therefore, these works have rarely, if at all, been explored and heard in this way over the last century. There is no extant recording of either of the sonatas from before 1951 (Soyer/Mittman, Sonata no. 2) and recordings of both sonatas emerge only in the 1960s, when artists such as Tortelier and Gendron took up the works using more modern pianos and a cello with steel strings.
The process of investigation involved being instructed by the instruments, as well as instructing them. An inevitable process of experimentation allows the performers to find the balance and timbre that are most appropriate to Fauré’s often dense counterpoint, as well as the richness of his sonorities. At the same time, a knowledge of the written and recorded material of the era informs interpretations that are built via the musical languages, culture and circumstances that led to the creation of the music, rather than looking back at it from our current moment (notwithstanding that this is to some degree inevitable). This study builds on written work by scholars such as Howat, Moore and Dorf and engages with historical recordings of related repertoire by artists such as Cortot, Perlemuter, Casals and Feuerman.
Further insight is gained by knowledge of Faure’s wider output, in a manner rarely applied to his chamber music to date. Most notably, the two late sonatas are often imbued with the spirit, as well as the musical content of Faure’s only opera, Penelope. The recording is available online to download and as a physical CD and has been distributed throughout Europe.