Piano Quintets (No.1 D min Op.89, N 158 ; No.2 C min, Op.115, N 188) (Full Score, hardback)

Faure Piano Quintets (No.1 D min Op.89, N 158 ; No.2 C min, Op.115, N 188) (Full Score, hardback)

Gabriel Fauré’s two quintets for piano and strings are summits of his achievement and landmarks in the repertory of piano quintets.  This critical edition will bring renewed interest to these masterpieces.

The First Quintet Op.89 was completed early in 1906 and had the longest gestation of any work by Fauré, spanning eighteen years.  It is laid out in a “romantic” three-movement form, like César Franck’s Quintet in F minor.  The Second Quintet, Op.115, was composed between 1919 and 1921, in the last great surge of the composer’s creativity.  Its four movements embody an expansive, luminous, freely dissonant style within an outwardly classical format.

The main themes of the first movements of both quintets offer two of the most beautiful melodies Fauré ever wrote.  The middle movement of Op.89 is one of Fauré’s most architecturally conceived scores, full of metrical complexity, while the scherzo of Op.115 is a dizzying tour de force of unclassifiable scales.  In the finales of both quintets, Fauré invented themes and formal layouts of a nature not found anywhere else in his chamber music.

In this edition, Carlo Caballero reconciles the inconsistencies between the full score and the string parts in the original editions while carefully preserving distinctions that are musically meaningful.  The editor also discusses Fauré’s use of double stems in the piano part and special intentions behind the terms “sostenuto”, “espressivo”, and “marcato”.

- Gabriel Fauré. Œuvres complètes Series V/I

- Format 26,0 x 33,0 cm