Valse-Caprice No.1 in A major Op.30 (1882)

Valse-Caprice No.2 in D flat major Op.38 (1884)

Considering the extent of the Chopin influence on Fauré’s early piano music, one would expect to find more Chopin features in at least the first two of the four Valses-Caprices he wrote between 1882 and 1894. In fact, while Chopin is not entirely absent, the more significant influence here is Schubert as elaborated in Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne with a little waltz-time Saint-Saëns and Chabrier added into the virtuoso mix. Anyway, whatever their stylistic origins, the Valses-Caprices are highly attractive works which deserve to be heard more often than they actually are. The reason why pianists tend to avoid them is not easy to work out but, if Saint-Saëns’s experience with No.2 in D flat is anything to go by, it could be to do with their frankly capricious construction: he particularly liked the piece, he told Fauré, but never played it in public because he had difficulty in memorising it.

Valse-Caprice No.1 in A major, which rejoices in half a dozen waltz tunes in not many more minutes, is no less capricious than its successor but perhaps less elusive. A comparatively regular feature in this case is that – nearly 30 years before Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales – it alternates between what Schubert (or his publishers) called valses sentimentales and valses nobles, contrasting seductive legato melody with more percussive material. The intimately expressive pp melody at the beginning, for example, is repeated and then offset by a short but aggressive ff episode. The same thing happens when the next theme, marked p e leggieramente, meets an exuberant ff allargando. After a repeat of the first pair, a new dolce ed espressivo theme in gently articulated even crotchets is confronted by the same ff allargando material. At the molto moderato beginning of what one might call the coda of the piece another dolce ed espressivo melody is briefly introduced before, in an accelerating tempo, it is converted into 2/4 rhythms in the right hand over the continuing 3/4 in the left. The allargando motif makes its last appearance on a crescendo in the closing bars.

In Valse-Caprice No.2 in D flat major – which, unlike No.1 in A, extends to including a development section – Fauré is less consistent in contrasting valses sentimentales with valses nobles. Although the lilting melody heard in the opening bars meets a rather quicker percussive contrast at an early stage, the lyrical theme which enters in the right hand over quaver figuration in the left has no such counterpart. It is followed instead by a recall of the opening material and, at a slower tempo, an expressive new melody in C sharp minor – which, together with the opening theme, features in the capriciously motivated development section. Similarly capricious, following a short silence, is an increasingly agitated valse noble with a heavily percussive climax. As calm is restored, the opening melody is recalled high in the right hand before its percussive counterpart initiates a frantic coda.