Fauré - Works for Cello & Piano
Gerhardt; Licad

Hyperion CDA67872

Release date January 2012

Hyperion Records’s Disc of the Month for January has set an impressive benchmark for 2012. Cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Cecile Licad have turned their hands to the cello sonatas of Fauré. (The pair previously came together last year in a recital disc entitled Casals Encores - it rightly earned them outstanding praise.) The rich sonorities of Gerhardt’s playing are perfectly suited to Fauré’s music. In turn, Licad has captured the rippling undertones of the piano writing and, when given them, the delicate melodic lines. These simply sing out in this recording. Both the cello sonatas fall into Fauré’s collection of late works and take themes from earlier works and rework them into something new. (The composer had begun to do this in his later compositions.) And so, as the sleeve-notes explain, Cello Sonata no. 1 is, in part, based on the Allegro deciso from the (unpublished) Symphony in D minor. In the sonata, we have something ‘rhythmically tightened and made more forceful’. On this recording, the finale is presented twice. Fauré originally marked the movement as crotchet = 80, though this has been considered impossibly slow by cellists. Gerhardt has chosen a more manageable tempo to conclude the sonata – and then offers a quicker (by nearly two minutes!) alternative at the end of the disc. Listeners can programme their CD players accordingly. Cello Sonata no. 2 is equally beautiful – all the more so when one considers that Fauré was already suffering from deafness when he wrote the sonata. The remainder of the disc is filled with some of Fauré’s shorter works for cello and piano. No disc of Fauré’s cello music would be complete without his Elegie, which is given a heart-wrenching performance here. Also included are the Romance, Papillon, Serenade and Sicilienne. These shorter works show us a Fauré who could create a sense of structure and development in less than three minutes. Gerhardt’s interpretation of Fauré is a very welcome addition to the catalogue and the CD rack!

Reviewed by Ruth Taylor