Piano Quartet in G minor, Op.45

Whatever the circumstances surrounding the composition of Fauré’s Piano Quartet in G minor - and all we really know about it is that it was completed at some time in 1886 - there must have been a powerful emotional stimulus behind it. Perhaps the death of the composer’s father in July 1885 had something to with it. If it doesn’t have the charm of the earlier Piano Quartet in C minor, it lacks nothing in lyrical inspiration and it certainly offers by far the more intense experience. Once gripped by the arresting opening bars, no one can easily escape involvement with it until the outcome becomes clear at the very end.

The principal feature of the opening bars is, of course, the melody proclaimed fortissimo and in unison by the three string instruments against impatient G minor harmonies on the piano. Not only the main theme of the first movement, it is also the source of much of the thematic material of the rest of the work. As soon as the initial surge of passion dies down, for example, the viola suggest a variant which is then reshaped by the violin as the expressive second subject in E flat major. Just at the end of the exposition a third theme, derived from the first by expanding its intervals, emerges quietly and peacefully on viola and cello against gently arpeggiated chords on the piano.

The message of the first movement, which ends in G major after a searching development and a full-scale recapitulation, is a tentatively optimistic one. But it might easily have ended differently. The haunted C minor Allegro molto - based on a cramped version of the main theme of the first movement, chilled by chromatic spectres and threatened by stabbing tritones on the piano - indicates how insecure the situation really is.

The slow movement is in a painfree world apart. Beginning with quietly tolling E flat major harmonies on the piano - inspired apparently by a memory of the evening bells at Cadirac in Roussillon where Fauré was brought up - it is a nostalgic memory of childhood. There are three main sections, the outer ones beginning with the bells on the piano and the folk-like melody on the viola, the more extended middle beginning with the bell harmonies interestingly transferred to the strings and the meditative main theme to the piano.

So it is up to the Allegro molto finale to resolve the situation. At first, with a passionate theme on unison strings against impatient G minor harmonies on the piano, little seems to have changed since the opening bars of the work. The second subject - a sweetly arching line high on the first violin - is happier and is extended into various major keys, including the elusive G major at one point. So when the main theme itself assumes a less threatening aspect, during the course of the development, hopes are raised once again. They are definitively ful­filled only in the closing stages, as previously inimical material is persuaded at last to join in the G major celebrations.