Fauré: Nocturnes & Barcarolles

Paris’ extensive instrument collection, the Musée de la Musique, offered Aline Piboule a choice of historic pianos on which to record her album of Fauré. After trying a few instruments, including an Erard from 1890, Piboule sat down at a 1929 grand piano made by Gaveau. She instantly fell in love with it, she tells Apple Music Classical—it was, she explains, “un coup de foudre” (“a lightning strike”). She opted for the Gaveau, partly because it was larger and more powerful than the Erard. Meanwhile, the Erard was a little too refined in sound, and didn’t correspond, says Piboule, to Fauré’s Romantic aesthetic. Here, Piboule presents an overview of Fauré’s piano music, including nocturnes and barcarolles among other pieces. It’s tempting to assume that the composer presented much of this music at the private musical soirées fashionable in Paris throughout the late-19th and early-20th centuries. That isn’t necessarily the case, suggests Piboule: “This is music on a large scale—it’s sensual, generous, and it needs a piano to match. “The Gaveau was built in 1929 and has been completely restored,” she adds. “It’s very responsive and perfect for the music of Fauré.” She explains that Fauré’s music, which she has played since she was 14, combines the melodic and harmonic beauty of Chopin with the contrapuntal rigour and clarity of J.S. Bach. It presents a marriage of old and new, she says, coupled with a deep-felt Romanticism. “Gaveau pianos have a very reliable mechanism,” Piboule resumes about her favoured instrument; “they’re not at all fragile, and you can play them with total confidence. It responds very well to the touch, but it’s also a piano with a wonderful warmth and great depth of sound.” It possesses a beautiful clarity as well, she adds, without the sound ever becoming too bright. Listen to the Nocturne No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 37, or the Nocturne No. 13 in B Minor, Op. 119, and you can hear everything this piano has to offer, as if these pieces were written specifically for it—“There really are no limits to this instrument,” she says. And although it was built five years after Fauré’s death, there is little doubt, adds Piboule, that the composer would have been very familiar with the sound and aesthetics of Gaveau pianos. On the evidence of her performances, Piboule surely makes a case for Gaveaus being closest to Fauré’s musical intentions—perhaps even embodying the very spirit of the music itself.