Faure: Piano Quintet in D minor, Op. 89 - I. Molto Moderato

ok and here is your second dose of french music for today - a very different, rather lesser-known piano quintet by a composer who lived roughly at the same time (about 20 years later on both ends) as franck.

faure wrote this work in his middle years as a music conservatoire inspector, having actually been blocked from a teaching post at the paris conservatoire by faculty who regarded him as too modern (he would end up there in 1896 anyway). faure had little time to devote himself exclusively to composition and sat on works for a while before getting them done - this quintet was in the works from 1890-94, finally published in 1895. it was dedicated to violinist eugene ysaye.

here is a great description of how i see the first movement:

Fauré's Piano Quintets are very different from his more popular Piano Quartets, which were written much earlier and storm the heights and depths of High Romanticism. The Quintets are sublime, but elusive. They are warm and comfy, like climbing with your feet into an armchair in front of a fireplace. The emotions are reticent, all is calm, you sense the soft smile of a wise old man. Sometimes it is a sad smile, a sorrow, a regret.

the beginning of this work is just so sad and wistful. later in this same review the writer says that the opening of this movement is "brahmsian," but in a way which sings with a very french melody - melancholy, unfulfilled, almost stalled, as if it has nowhere to go and is forced to circle around the same small room. i think that's why these works aren't really memorable - they aren't singing - but like much french music, even the stuff we all know and love, it is great at establishing an otherworldly color.
(let me just say as an aside, i don't know what "molto moderato" means - i guess he really really didn't want the tempo to be too much in either direction?)
the first phrase almost doesn't end until 1:07, the first we get of a real warm cadence. everything up until this point is kind of a cold color, lonely, sliding back and forth between neighboring keys.
the piano arpeggios are back immediately, but a "b" section begins around 1:45. i actually have a hard time telling where phrases "end" in this whole piece, but the texture/rhythm change right around here into something that really reminds me of the second theme in schumann's piano quintet.
a different section at 2:47, with slower arpeggios in the piano and a more songful theme which then dovetails and develops on the initial theme.

critics express problems with faure's monochromaticism and i think they might have a point. but the long-breathedness and chameleon-esque character of this music is what makes it rather special. i always like hearing how everything just melts into everything else - themes emerge from an almost constantly flowing texture, transitions are so gradual you don't notice they've happened until all of a sudden something strongly familiar emerges. that's what i like about this piece, other than the fact that i just really like the opening feeling it gives me. kind of goosebumpy.