Faure - Piano Music [Roge]Faure's piano music is a grower, it takes time to get into his soundworld, he initially copied the style of Chopin, and with Nocturnes, Impromptus, and Barcarolles, you can see that he's composing in the genre of the master, but later Faure became his own man, his works reach up to over op 120, yet on this disc we have only early Faure, the latest piece is Op44, composed in 1886, yet Faure continued composing until 1924!, so roughly the first third of Faure's composing life, it's his most melodic period, and Roge gives us a nice selection, but don't be fooled into thinking that this is a representative selection of his whole life.
Pascal Roge is French, now 60 years old, being French he has mainly concentrated on the French repertoire, he made this recording in 1989, the recording is a bit blunted, and the front cover [photo by Steve Wallace] is hard to work out what the photographer was trying to portray, certainly of ferns, at first looks like in the snow, but it's so ambiguous, a better picture could have been chosen.
On this recording it's the Nocturnes i really enjoyed, especially 1-2 & 4, the Fourth is a favourite of mine, since hearing it on a Gerhard Oppitz recital disc, but this time listening i was drawn to Nocturne 2,
Here's Eriko Ogura playing the Second Nocturne on YouTube.
