Malcolm Martineau’s Fauré Songs: Volume 4

A funny thing happened along pianist Malcolm Martineau’s journey to record the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré. In March of 2018 Signum Classics released the third of the four CDs that Martineau had planned to record. However, almost exactly two months later the Canadian ATMA Classique “scooped” Martineau with a four-CD collection of all the songs in a single package. Over three years have elapsed since then, during which we all had to readjust our activities to pandemic conditions. At the beginning of this month, Signum finally released the final volume in Martineau’s project.

One of the major repercussions of the pandemic has been the change in distribution practices. When I wrote about the first three CDs, I provided hyperlinks to Amazon.com Web pages for the “physical products;” but these usually included hyperlinks for streaming the tracks. For this final volume Amazon has created only an MP3 download page; but I really cannot endorse it because it does not include a PDF file of the booklet, which includes all the texts. Rather, I direct readers to the Presto Music Classical Web page. Not only does this provide three download options with different levels of audio quality, all of which include the PDF booklet; but also it includes the option of purchasing the CD. Since Presto is based in Royal Leamington Spa in the United Kingdom, delivery time of the “physical version” is likely to be a bit up in the air.

While I have been happy with the subsequent ATMA Classique compilation, I am still glad that Martineau’s project has come to completion. From a personal selfish point of view, I am more familiar with his selection of vocalists. Two of those vocalists are making their “Fauré debut” on this final album: John Mark Ainsley and Kitty Whatley. The remaining six have appeared on previous volumes: Lorna Anderson, Isobel Buchanan, John Chest, Sarah Connolly, Iestyn Davies, and Ann Murray.

The music itself covers a rich variety of songs composed at different periods in Fauré’s life. These include two of his “Vocalise” compositions, sung (in “order of appearance”) by Murray and Anderson. In addition there are two song cycles. Whatley sings the six songs in the Opus 61 cycle La Bonne Chanson (the good song). Then, the journey concludes, with the four last tracks on this fourth volume which present Chest’s performance of the Opus 118 L’horizon chimérique, the last vocal composition that Fauré wrote. That final selection is appropriate unto itself, but it also puts the cap on the highly satisfying experience of listening to the entire four-album collection.