Fauré: Barcarolles; Dolly Suite Pascal Rogé & Elena Font

• Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924): Barcarolle:
• 1 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 26 04:46
• 2 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 2 in G Major, Op. 41 07:01
• 3 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 3 in G-Flat Major, Op. 42 08:21
• 4 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 4 in A-Flat Major, Op. 44 04:14
• 5 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 5 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 66 07:33
• 6 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 6 in E-Flat Major, Op. 70 04:04
• 7 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 90 04:25
• 8 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 8 in D-Flat Major, Op. 96 04:23
• 9 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 9 in A Minor, Op. 101 04:42
• 10 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 10 in A Minor, Op. 104 No. 2 04:05
• 11 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 105 05:29
• 12 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 12 in E-Flat Major, Op. 106a 03:57
• 13 Fauré: Barcarolle No. 13 in C Major, Op. 116 04:25
• Dolly Suite, Op. 56:
• 14 Fauré: Dolly Suite, Op. 56: I. Berceuse 02:36
• 15 Fauré: Dolly Suite, Op. 56: II. Mi-a-ou 01:49
• 16 Fauré: Dolly Suite, Op. 56: III. Le jardin de Dolly 02:33
• 17 Fauré: Dolly Suite, Op. 56: IV. Kitty-valse 02:28
• 18 Fauré: Dolly Suite, Op. 56: V. Tendresse 03:09
• 19 Fauré: Dolly Suite, Op. 56: VI. Le pas espagnol 02:11
• 20 Fauré: Pavane, Op. 50 (Arr. Plante for Piano 4 Hands) 05:18
• Requiem, Op. 48:
• 21 Fauré: Requiem, Op. 48: IV. Pie Jesu (Arr. Plante for Piano 4 Hands) 02:52
• Total Runtime 01:30:21

Info for Fauré: Barcarolles; Dolly Suite

To mark his 75th birthday, Pascal Rogé is releasing a new album devoted exclusively to works by Gabriel Fauré. It includes his first complete recording of Fauré's Barcarolles. The album also features the popular Dolly Suite, accompanied by his wife Elena Font.

A legendary pianist: Pascal Rogé was signed by the Decca label in 1969 at the age of 18, recommended by his teacher Julius Katchen. Rogé has a special affinity for French piano literature, as evidenced by his renowned recordings of works by composers such as Satie, Debussy, and Poulenc. This new recording draws on his lifelong experience with the repertoire and his love of French music.

Over the years, Pascal Rogé has won a devoted audience for his accounts of the complete piano works of his compatriots Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc. The missing link, however, was Gabriel Fauré. He had recorded much of the chamber music, but only one album of selected solo pieces. Therefore as part of his 75th birthday celebrations, he has set down for the first time one of the composer’s most significant bodies of piano music: his 13 Barcarolles.

“I wanted to do something consistent through which we could show the artistry and the genius of Fauré,” Rogé says. The Barcarolles, which span the composer’s entire compositional life, offered a special journey: “The first is very early, and the last ones are from his final years. It’s interesting to observe his progression through one genre. I thought it was musically and historically something important to do.”

Fauré, born in southwestern France in 1845, followed an unconventional career, combining a preference for chamber music, instrumental music and songs with a busy life as choirmaster and later organist of the Madeleine, Paris’s high society church. He was a popular figure in the Parisian salons and an influential composition professor whose pupils included Ravel, Enescu and Nadia Boulanger. As director of the Paris Conservatoire from 1905 until after the First World War, he revolutionised the institution. By the time he died aged 79 in 1924, his music had been impacted by everything from French Romanticism to incipient modernism, always morphing within his distinctive, sometimes mysterious personal voice.

In his Barcarolles, Fauré uses the Venetian boat song’s lilting rhythm as a starting point for pianistic flights of fantasy filled with intricate harmonic transformations and textural marvels that can require the pianist to seem almost ambidextrous (which Fauré himself is said to have been). The early pieces are rich with charm, the middle-period ones often questing and adventurous. The late works inhabit a new world that is sparer, more condensed and thrillingly unpredictable.

For this recording, Rogé learned some of the Barcarolles for the first time. “I was not expecting such intense work,” he remarks. “Of all the great composers, I think Fauré is the most secret, the most subtle and complicated. I believe it’s almost more music for the interpreter than for the audience. I get so much pleasure and excitement from it, analysing it and realising that sometimes one sharp or flat makes the whole difference.

“I often compare Fauré with literature,” he says, “especially Marcel Proust, the kind of writing that you cannot read straight through. You stop and read the phrase again. You read it slowly, and gradually the meaning reveals itself. The music of Fauré is similar: you really have to stop and listen.” ...

Pascal Rogé, piano
Elena Font, piano (tracks 13, 20, 21)

Pascal Rogé
exemplifies the finest in French pianism; his playing of Poulenc, Satie, Fauré, Saint-Saëns or Ravel in particular is characterised by its elegance, beauty and delicate phrasing—his name is synonymous with the best playing of French repertory in the world today.

Born in Paris, Pascal Rogé became an exclusive Decca recording artist at the age of 17. He has won many prestigious awards including two Gramophone Awards, a Grand Prix du Disque and an Edison Award for his interpretations of the Ravel and Saint- Saëns concertos. Other recordings feature a Debussy cycle and a Bartok cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra. For the Poulenc Edition in 1999 Mr Rogé recorded both piano concertos, the Aubade and the Concerto Champêtre all under Charles Dutoit.

For Oehms Classics Mr Rogé recorded the Ravel G major and Left Hand Piano Concertos, and the Piano Concerto, Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris by Gershwin with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. His latest recording project is the Rogé Edition, released on the Onyx Classics label. The first CD release inaugurated his first complete Debussy cycle with the Préludes and was followed by a second disc including Estampes and a third containing Images. Also for Onyx he has released a disc of Piano Concertos by Mozart with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, a disc of French repertoire for four-hands and two-pianos with his wife, Ami and Poètes du Piano a live recital of Chopin, Debussy, Fauré, Poulenc and Ravel.

Pascal Rogé has performed in almost every major concert hall in the world. Some of the orchestras he has appeared with include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de Radio France, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the major London orchestras. He appears regularly in the United States and is a frequent guest artist in Japan, Australia and Latin America.

This album contains no booklet.