Piano Quintet No.2 in C minor, Op.115 (1921)

Fauré’s first Piano Quintet    in D minor, the three movements of which occupied him, on and off, for two periods of three years each between 1891 and 1906, has never had a succes commensurate with the effort put into it. The Second in C minor, a more substantial and more complex score in four movements, was written in a mere eighteen months and, on its first performance in Paris in May 1921, was greeted as one of the greatest of all works of its kind.     

The Piano Quintet in C minor is by a composer in his mid-seventies and yet it is remarkable not only for its abundant lyrical inspiration but also for its rhythmic energy. There is so much potential for melodic development in the opening theme of the first movement that Fauré evidently felt constrained to cut it off before being carried away by it. The piano arpeggios suddenly cease and the strings introduce a fortissimo second subject that seems to defy any further lyrical expansion, although the piano adds a third theme that very delicately contradicts it. This pattern of events is twice repeated, once in the development and once in what seems to be the recapitulation – which it is, except that it occurs only midway though a movement dedicated now to integrating the second and third themes in the lyrical development and carrying them into a radiant C major coda.

The Allegro vivo in E flat major is a brilliantly scored “French scherzo” in a tradition beginning with the Allegro vivo of Fauré’s own Violin Sonata in A major in 1875 and fruitfully cultivated in the meantime by Debussy and Ravel as well as by Fauré himself. In this case legato melody in the strings is gradually extended and set against the scherzando material in such a flexible way that it can occupy the foreground – at one point as a waltz in B flat major – or recede into the background with no perceptible break in continuity.

If any part of the Piano Quintet in C minor betrays the composer’s state of mind when he wrote it – comfortably installed at Lake Annecy in the summer of 1920 but in poor health and tormented more than ever by the deafness that had long afflicted him – it is the Andante moderato. The melancholy message is communicated in what is surely a deliberate allusion to the manner of late Beethoven on string quartet alone in the opening bars. The function of the piano, it seems, is to postulate a serenely positive alternative to that attitude and to persuade the strings into sharing it. As it turns out, they are very willing to do so, although their initial anxiety twice returns – at the beginning of the development and the beginning of the recapitulation – and it is only at the end of the movement that they can escape it and confirm their adherence to an untroubled G major.

The Allegro molto begins somewhat lugubriously in C minor but, after all that has happened in the work so far, that is surely not the way it will end. In fact, the brighter first episode of what turns out to be a rondo construction is in G flat major and it is on the recapitulation of that material in F major that the piece moves into its masterfully extended coda and its exuberantly multi-stopped C major ending.

Of Fauré’s two Piano Quintets, the First in D minor was by far the more troublesome to the composer. Although its three movements occupied him, on and off, for two periods of three years each between 1891 and 1906, it has never had a succes commensurate with the effort put into it. The Second in C minor, a more substantial and more complex score in four movements, was written in a mere eighteen months and, on its first performance in Paris in May 1921, was greeted as one of the greatest of all works of its kind. Actually, it didn’t have many serious rivals at the time (one each by Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak and Franck) and it still doesn’t.       

The Piano Quintet in C minor is by a composer in his mid-seventies and yet it is remarkable not only for its abundant lyrical inspiration but also for its rhythmic energy. There is so much potential for melodic development in the opening theme of the first movement – intriguingly projected by viola across bar lines which are themselves only vaguely defined by the ostinato of C minor arpeggios on the piano – that Fauré evidently felt constrained to cut it off before being carried away by it. The piano arpeggios suddenly cease and the strings introduce a fortissimo second subject that seems to defy any further lyrical expansion, although the piano adds a third theme that very delicately contradicts it and could even, eventually, get round it. This pattern of events is twice repeated, once in the development and once in what seems to be the recapitulation – which it is, except that it occurs only midway though a movement dedicated now to integrating the second and third themes in the lyrical development and carrying them into a radiant C major coda.

The Allegro vivo in E flat major is a brilliantly scored scherzo in a tradition beginning with the Allegro vivo of Fauré’s own Violin Sonata in A major in 1875 and fruitfully cultivated in the meantime by Debussy and Ravel as well as by Fauré himself. It is also a scherzo with a difference. The pattering quality of the main theme is traditional enough but the atonal implications of its chromatically inflected main theme are not. Similarly, although the alternation of pizzicato and rapidly bowed articulation in the strings is characteristic of the genre, there is no precedent for the subtle way in which material conventionally reserved for a contrasting middle section is introduced almost from the start. Legato melody in the strings is gradually extended and set against the scherzando material in such a flexible way that it can occupy the foreground –at one point as a waltz in B flat major – or recede into the background with no perceptible break in continuity.

If any part of the Piano Quintet in C minor betrays the composer’s state of mind when he wrote it – comfortably installed at Lake Annecy in the summer of 1920 but in poor health and tormented more than ever by the deafness that had long afflicted him – it is the Andante moderato. The melancholy message is communicated in what is surely a deliberate allusion to the manner of late Beethoven on string quartet alone in the opening bars. The function of the piano, it seems, is to postulate a serenely positive alternative to that attitude and to persuade the strings into sharing it. As it turns out, they are very willing to do so, adding their voices most appealingly to a melodiously inspired contrapuntal texture. However, even though they are particularly impressed by the piano’s simple but eloquent second theme in G major, their initial anxiety twice returns –at the beginning of the development and the beginning of the recapitulation – and it is only at the end of the movement that they can escape it and confirm their adherence to an untroubled G major.

The Allegro molto begins somewhat lugubriously in C minor but, after all that has happened in the work so far, that is surely not the way it will end. In fact, the brighter first episode of what turns out to be a rondo construction is in G flat major and it is on the recapitulation of that material in F major that the piece moves into its masterfully extended coda and its exuberantly multi-stopped C major ending.