Faure - Cello Sonatas, Nos 1 & 2 [CD]

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) composed two sonatas for cello and piano together with two sonatas for violin and piano over his long career. After hearing the violin sonatas, I wanted to get to know the cello sonatas. I found this beautiful recent CD on Naxos with cellist Maria Kliegel and pianist Nina Tichman. As with the violin sonatas, the beauties of the cello sonatas unfold with multiple hearings. Faure composed one violin sonata early and one late in his life. Both the cello sonatas are late, difficult works. Lovers of the cello or of French music will treasure this disk.

Cellist Maria Kliegel studied with Janos Starker and was a protégé of Rostropovich. She performed with Rostropovich and the Orchestre Nationale de France and the National Symphony of Washington D.C. Over the years, Kliegel has recorded extensively for Naxos together with Tichman, an American who is a professor of piano at the Cologne Musichochschule. Kliegel's CDs for Naxos include the complete Beethoven cello sonatas, with Tichman on the piano, the six Bach solo cello suites, the cello sonatas of Mendelssohn, Chopin, Saint-Saens, and Kodaly, together with a disk of virtuoso romantic cello music. Her recordings have been praised for their romanticism, large tone, and passion. These qualities, and Tichman's gifted pianism, are amply on display in this CD of Faure's music for cello and piano.

Faure's cello and piano sonatas are both in three movements and combine late romantic passion with a musical language strongly influenced by Debussy. Both works are intense, in spite of the aloofness sometimes associated with Faure. The cello and piano play as partners. The first sonata dates from 1917. The opening movement contrasts a highly rhythmical opening theme, with virtuosic figures in the piano, with a lyrical secondary theme. The piano writing in this movement is elaborate and dense. The second movement, in the minor, also is based on two themes, given largely to the cello, with light chordal accompaniment in the piano's upper register. This movement owes a great deal to Faure's Requiem. The work comes to a sweeping conclusion in a movement marked "allegro commodo".

The sonata no. 2 dates from 1921 and contrasts brilliant writing in the outer movements with a somber funeral march in the middle movement commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of Napoleon. This work moves between major and minor tonality in each of the movements, and the collaboration between cello and piano seems tighter to me than in the first sonata. As does the first sonata, the opening movement of the second features strongly syncopated rhythms. The funeral march of the second movement is the centerpiece of this work, with the deeply sad opening material relieved only slightly by a lyrical middle section. (I was reminded of Beethoven's opus 26 piano sonata and Chopin's "funeral march" piano sonata.) The work concludes with a short allegro, in which the cello and the piano frequently play in a call and response pattern.

The CD also includes seven short works for piano and cello, some of which, including the Berceuse, Sicilenne, Romance, and Apres un reve, are frequently performed by other instrumental combinations. The opening Elegie, opus 24 and Papillion, opus 77, were apparently written together, despite the disparity in publication date. The mournful Elegie contrasts markedly with its fluttering companion. The short Serenade, opus 98, which concludes the CD dates from 1908 and was dedicated to a young Pablo Casals.

Robin Friedman

Fauré: Cello Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 / Après un rêve / Papillon / Sicilienne is a 2005 Naxos recording featuring Maria Kliegel on Cello and Nina Tichman on piano. Here we get to here them play Fauré's Cello Sonatas No 1 & 2. The music notes have been written by Keith Anderson. Highly recommended. 5/5.