Dear Angela,
What a joy is your Faure album! I have loved the Balade since I was very young, but never had a recording of the solo version. Of course, there are many wonderful revues already pouring forth. Here's a lovely one (below) I discovered from the Buffalo News. I thought you'ld get a kick out of whom you were companioned with in the heading--and the "beef and yorkshire pudding approach" is priceless!
Thank You, Thank You...and Blessings in wrapping up production for Art of Fugue!Sincerely,
Martin Sarvis
Jerusalem
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
TheBuffaloNews.com
City & Region
Listening Post: Bob Dylan, Sly and the Family Stone, Angela Hewitt plays Faure, Jonas Kaufman and Jazz Pianist Geri Allen.
Classical
Faure, Piano Music performed by Angela Hewitt (Hyperion). There is a wonderful story at the end of Angela Hewitt’s characteristically superb notes to her magnificent recording of Gabriel Faure’s piano music. The disc closes with Faure’s “Ballade” for solo piano Op. 19, from 1879 when the long-lived composer was 34. When Faure, in the company of Saint-Saens, met Franz Liszt for the second time, he presented him with a copy of the “Ballade.” Writes Hewitt: “Liszt, then 70 years old gave up trying to play it after five or six pages, saying he didn’t have ‘enough fingers’ and asked the composer to continue.” Hewitt not only has “enough fingers” to play a terrific one-disc program of Faure, she has the ferocious intelligence and canniesss that has characterized her performances of Bach and Beethoven. But she also has something else of her own – a no-nonsense beef and Yorkshire pudding approach to music that is, by most assay, the epitome of balladic refinement. The lyricism here is exquisite, the late romantic chromaticism it flowered into is majestic. I especially liked the longer-than-usual pauses between pieces on the brilliantly recorded disc. All phases of Faure’s piano music are represented. For someone who wanted an ideal one-disc introduction to Faure’s great piano music, this will do brilliantly. (J.S.)