Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 03/28/2012, uploaded on 06/23/2012

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Second only to Robert Schumann in Fauré’s admiration was Frédéric Chopin, and the influence of the Polish expatriate can be seen in the selection of titles Fauré employed in his piano music: Nocturne, Barcarolle, and Impromptu. Though numbered among the first Romantics, Chopin considered himself a Classicist; though a prime example of late French Romanticism, Fauré often tempered his works with a Classical restraint. Like his predecessor, this influence of Classicism by no means meant his works for piano were easy to perform. On one occasion, the great Franz Liszt, while attempting to perform a piece by Fauré, remarked that he had “run out of fingers.” For much of his career, Fauré was an organist, and though the piano was his medium of choice for keyboard music, he nonetheless wrote with a proclivity towards the fingerings and idioms more comfortable for an organist than a pianist. Lending even more difficulty was the fact that Fauré was also ambidextrous and equally inclined to place a melody in the left hand as in the right, or in notes alternating between the two. Fauré’s output for the piano spanned many decades of his career, from the 1860s to almost his death in 1924.

The first three of Fauré’s six impromptus were all composed in the year 1883, but of these early essays it is the third that is considered the richest and best. In the key of A-flat major, a blithe and joyful lyric melody unfolds over a sort of moto perpetuo accompaniment of arpeggios. It soon rises to a climax that betrays a tenderer emotional undercurrent, but then just as quickly seems to flitter away in the closing bars of this opening section. In the central episode, a new melody appears--dream-like and with a subtle obsessiveness—in the key of the tonic minor and atop Fauré’s favorite compositional device of syncopated chords. Initially more reserved than the carefree melody which opened the piece, it eventually grows in intensity and at its highpoint amplifies the subtle emotional strain heard in the previous melody’s climax. The return of the moto perpetuo, however, whisks away this serious music back into a restatement of the joyous opening. In a structural move that belies the off-the-cuff manner of the work’s title, Fauré wavers uncertainly between the dreamy theme of the episode and the blithe music of the principal theme. It is the latter that wins out, however, and closes the Impromptu with carefree bliss.      Joseph DuBose

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Impromptu No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 34      Gabriel Fauré

The Impromptu No 3 in A flat Major is also in ternary form and it is among Faure’s most brilliant piano pieces. It hides a very original modulating game and contagious vitality.         Sofya Melikyan

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.