Fauré: Cello Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2; Piano Trio; Nocturne No. 13

Fauré wrote this group of works near the end of his life, when he was suffering from increasing deafness and an acute condition which made listening to music agonising. It is extraordinary that he did not just abandon composition, but he said, ‘If I can’t work any longer, then what am I doing here?’ So Fauré gathered his force and produced some of the most deeply reflective and beautiful of all his works.

The Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 109 is a fascinating and unsettling product of those dark days of the First World War. Fauré’s youngest son was in the army and it is not hard to hear something of his father’s anxiety in the sonata. The Cello Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 117 was written between March and November 1921 and this happier time is reflected in more contented music. Fauré’s friend Vincent d’Indy, spoke for many when he complimented his fellow composer on the sheer ‘youthfulness’ of this music: ‘plus the mastery of maturity. And it’s so beautiful!’ These works are here joined by Nocturne No. 13 in B minor, Op. 119, completed after the death of Fauré’s closest friend, Camille Saint-Saëns. It was Fauré’s last solo piano work and completed the second of two great work cycles, the Barcarolles and Nocturnes, which between them chart the course of Fauré’s composing life and contain some of the composer’s most intimate thoughts. The Thirteenth Nocturne is as well the summation of the two sets. ‘Its grip is so powerful’, wrote the great French pianist Yvonne Lefébure, ‘that there is no place for rational explanation…, it is the only example of a work in which not a single note could be changed or removed’. Completing the disc is the Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 120, which despite its moments of drama unfolds with an easy-flowing serenity.