Gabriel Fauré (photographer unknown, from the Département Musique at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, public domain in the United States, Wikipedia page)
Last night Old First Presbyterian Church provided the venue for the first of four Old First Concerts programs prepared for the seventh annual San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF). The other two will be taking place at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral (Noontime Concerts™) and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Bowes Center. The overall theme of the Festival is French keyboard music, and last night’s program honored the centennial of the death of Gabriel Fauré.
Most of the program was devoted to solo piano music. However, the concluding selection was the Opus 13 sonata for violin and piano with Eric Chin, one of the two violinists in the Telegraph Quartet, performing with Artistic Director Jeffrey LaDeur at the keyboard. I must confess that I first encountered this sonata in The Heifetz Collection anthology, and I have been a sucker for it ever since. Thus, whatever the rest of the program had to offer, I was determined to wait for this last work; and it was definitely worth the wait! Chin and LaDeur had just the right chemistry to capture the full scope of rhetorical turns encountered in this four-movement work, which is probably Fauré’s earliest venture into chamber music.
Prior to the sonata, LaDeur gave a solo account of the Opus 73 set of variations on a theme in C-sharp minor, completed in 1895. As one can see from the opus numbers, this is a significantly more mature composition; and there is no end of imaginative composition emerging as the variations progress. What was important, however, was the LaDeur consistently delivered a clear understanding of the interplay between the “background” of the theme itself and the “foreground” of embellishments in the variations. Where his keyboard repertoire is concerned, this was a high point in Fauré’’s capacity to work with “long form” composition.
The other relatively long work on the program was the Opus 19 “Ballade,” played by Gwendolyn Mok during the first half. Written in the key of F-sharp major, this involves a relatively sophisticated unfolding of a basic ABA form, with a generous share of interleaving thematic elements. This was a major undertaking for Fauré; and he subsequently arranged it for piano and orchestra, possibly to provide a more refined perspective on all of those thematic elements. Sadly, Mok could not account for all of those elements consistently, particularly in the middle section.
She seemed a bit more in her element with the two shorter pieces flanking Opus 19 on either side. The first of these was the nocturne in E-flat major, the first of the three Opus 33 nocturnes. Interestingly, this was followed by Opus 34: the (third) impromptu in A-flat major. The nocturne serves up a rather generous outpouring of notes. Sadly, too many of them in the middle section were clouded up by too much pedal work in Mok’s performance.
Mok’s set was followed by four of the six movements from the Opus 56 Dolly. The title is the nickname of Régina-Hélène Bardac, daughter of vocalist Emma Bardac. (Bardac is probably best known for having affairs with both Fauré and Claude Debussy.) The suite was composed for piano duet, and it was performed last night by Sarah Yuan and Munan Cheng. The music comes easily to the hands (which I know because, several year ago, I played it with one of my neighbors). The selected movements were “Berceuse,” “Mi-a-ou” (which, believe it or not, has nothing to do with cats), “Le jardin de Dolly,” and “Le pas espagnol.” Personally, I could have done with more of Opus 56 and less of Opus 33; but that is just an individual’s preference!
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