![]() Time and again Fauré’s mélodies invite us into different corners of the same secluded retreat: shaded arbours en sourdine, oases of repose and a mysterious, secret sensuality. When Fauré thinks back to the beauties of that first ‘jardin clos’, the enclosed monastery garden at Montgauzy, he unearths harmonies that flower as luxuriously, ceaselessly, as nature itself – sometimes secretly, unobtrusively, and sometimes in a glorious blaze of colour. At the same time he experienced the sight and smells of flowers and greenery in his very own walled paradise, different strands of memory that were combined in a synthesis of visual and tonal enchantment. His father had been headmaster of the École normale at Montgauzy, near Foix, and the young boy had spent many hours in the gardens surrounding the chapel where plainchant was sung accompanied by an old harmonium. Flowers are often to be found in other composers’ work (Schumann’s settings also extol roses and jasmine), but Fauré’s attraction to nature in an enclosed setting is deeply personal. The distance between the talking flowers of the first song and the Eden of the concluding cycle is a musical journey that takes the listener from the light-heartedly ridiculous to the sublime. Amidst the programme’s many roses (clearly the composer’s favourite) are other flowerings (jasmine, for example, is a recurring theme) in various gardens, or flourishing in the wild. The phrase is taken from the Van Lerberghe setting from La chanson d’Ève. The fourth and final volume of the Hyperion intégrale is Dans un parfum de roses. Our aim here is to provide repertoire diversity while retaining chronology within each individual disc issue. ![]() One has to weigh the undeniable intellectual satisfaction of chronology, hearing each song as it passes by in its correct sequence, with the more relaxed pleasure of listening to a well-chosen group of songs – with texts that are juxtaposed for a deeper reason than chronological happenstance. It would not even be possible to extrapolate the ‘popular’ Fauré on to a single chronological disc: the towering presence of La bonne chanson would confound any such asset stripping. For the works that most frequently appear in song recitals one must explore the mélodies of the middle period. On the other hand the masterly cycles of the composer’s later years (another one and a quarter CDs perhaps) can intimidate the music-lover who prefers Fauré at his more conventionally lyrical and accessible. These songs are charming, always interesting, indeed they are often much more than that but the Fauré connoisseur might consider them too lightweight to be heard all at once as they do not represent this composer at his apogee. In a recording presented in chronological terms the first one and a quarter CDs would have to be given over to the composer’s early works. It does not help that Fauré’s creative life subdivides into three, rather than four, periods. This box contained ten sumptuous LP sides there were thus nine opportunities for musical and mental punctuation in listening to the composer’s complete mélodie output at home. The Ameling–Souzay–Baldwin complete Fauré songs on French EMI – a set now thirty years old – was issued in a new chronological order established by the great Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux. Each of those lieder programmes has been issued one at a time. Neither the Hyperion Schubert Edition nor the Schumann (nearly 50 CDs between them) attempted a chronological approach (at least, not until the recent appearance of a re-mastered edition of the Schubert songs, Hyperion CDS44201/40). The complete Fauré songs require four CDs, and the question arises as how best to programme them. ![]() Double-album sets of the complete songs of Ernest Chausson and Emmanuel Chabrier then appeared. The first composer to have an intégrale in this edition was Henri Duparc this was followed by Déodat de Séverac and Louis Durey (both on single discs). ![]() The Hyperion French Song Edition has already issued single-disc selections of mélodies by Georges Bizet and Camille Saint-Saëns as well as double albums of selected songs by Charles Gounod and Reynaldo Hahn. ![]()
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