Piano Quintet No.1 in D minor Op.89 (1890–1905)

With most of Fauré’s chamber music – the two Piano Quartets, for example, or the Second Piano Quintet – there is no problem. The First Piano Quintet does, however, present problems, as the scarcity of its appearances on concert programmes seems to suggest. The public does not clamour for it and ensembles are nervous about it. The composer himself had years of trouble with it. The problems began when Fauré decided that material intended for a third piano quartet demanded the resources of a piano quintet. That was in 1890, when he wrote the exposition of the Molto moderato and some of the Adagio. In spite of encouragement from Eugène Ysaÿe he abandoned it at that point and, although he worked on it intermittently in the meantime, he delayed making a serious attempt to finish it until 1903, and he still needed two years after that to complete what he called “this animal of a quintet.”

A major problem was the development of the first movement. No work of its kind has a more beautiful beginning, the main theme free-floating in a Dorian A on second violin under the most delicate D minor arpeggios on the piano. Two more themes are introduced, a robustly expressive second subject for the strings alone and, while they are still preoccupied by it, a brighter idea in right-hand octaves on the piano. In postulating such disparity, a composer who liked to reconcile his themes, rather than set them in conflict, issued a formidable challenge to himself.The greatness of this Molto moderato is that, while the process is texturally and harmonically complicated at times, Fauré achieves with no apparent failure of spontaneity exactly what he set out to do. One significant stage in the reconciliation is the point half-way through the development where the cello and the pianist’s left hand join in a unison fusion of characteristics of the first and second subjects. Another is the beginning of the recapitulation where first and second subjects are recalled simultaneously on cello and violin respectively. Not that this ends the process, which is extended through a coda of gradually declining passion.

Another problem is the main theme of the G major Adagio, which is introduced by first violin over piano arpeggios and a somewhat distracting cello counterpoint. A lovely inspiration, it moves so slowly that there is only one pitch inflection (off the beat) in each of the first three 12/8 bars. It is difficult to retain the shape of a melody with such a low profile. The contrasting material here is a long-delayed and rather more animated but still lyrical melody introduced by the piano in B minor and in 4/4 time. So now Fauré has set himself a task of metrical as well as melodic reconciliation. Alternating bars of 12/8 and 4/4 mingle the two themes usefully until a forceful recall of the main theme on second violin and cello in ff unison restores a consistent 12/8. What clinches the construction is the recapitulation of the second theme ingeniously rephrased into 12/8 and the first theme compressed into 4/4, both of them fully reconciled to the situation.

The composer feared that he would be accused of borrowing the main theme of the last movement from Beethoven’s “Choral Symphony.” But that problem does not exist: Fauré’s tune has less in common with the “Ode to Joy” than with the last movement of Franck’s Violin Sonata or, indeed, a segment of the opening theme of the present work. The subject of much repetition in different colours, it gives way to another idea – with contrastingly wide melodic leaps and dotted rhythms – not far from half-way through. The combination of the two themes in a variety of contrapuntal textures inspires increasing excitement and a jubilant ending.