Franck & Fauré

No. 204 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast204

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This week ends our several week-long look at the sonata, and is our last Blog and Podcast before we enter an “every other week” format of new montages for July and August.

The sonatas in A Major by Cesar Franck and Gabriel Faure are probably one of the most recorded “pairings” of similar works in the same key , other than maybe the pairing of the A Minor piano concertos of Edvard Grieg and Robert Schumann. Unlike the Grieg/Schumann pairing, the works by the Belgian and French composers are contemporary to each other, and the composers were – if not friends – certainly well aware of each other’s work.

In a post from a couple of years ago in my Once Upon the Internet series, I featured both sonatas adapted for cello and piano from the original violin and piano. The rich sound of the cello confers a different character to the sonatas, and is worth taking in for comparison – some of you may even prefer these adaptations to the originals.

Today’s montage assigns the sonatas to different pairs of performers – the Franck is played by the Lefèvre brothers, and the Fauré is played by the studio coupling of Joshua Bell and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Both performances are heart felt and strong in their own right.

To complete the montage, I added a cello sonata by Fauré.

I think you will love this music too.