Pianist Roy Howat is a prodigiously astute scholar whose Debussy in Proportion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)—arguing that Debussy’s formal procedures were indebted to “cabbalistic” numerology—is a major contribution to the understanding of fin de siècle French culture. He is also the Urtext editor of several Fauré works for Edition Peters, and his richly informed notes for the present album include several musicological asides of which this, regarding the Second Violin Sonata, is representative:

Once again Fauré’s manuscript is revealing: besides resolving a few misprints, it shows—notably in the first movement— Fauré’s initial conception of phrasing, in ways that the printed edition overlaid for reasons of bowing practicality. It also provides a solution at the one place where Fauré’s deafness appears to have played him false, in an attempt to make the violin hold the bass line for a few bars of the first movement, under the piano texture. In practice this doesn’t work: happily Fauré’s manuscript shows an alternative (unpublished) option for blending the instruments there, one that solves the problem and is adopted here.

Teamed with young Alban Beikircher, playing a 1729 Domenicus Montagnana instrument, the upshot is an emphasis on purity of line, a straightforwardness which, while hardly eschewing nuance, can devolve occasionally into the literal where the accounts one is drawn to—e.g., Dumay/Collard, Mintz/Bronfman, Osostowicz/Tomes, Fujikara/Osorio for the sonatas—pursue immediate lift or impassioned sweep with an almost conversational animation of detail, transition, gesture, the refreshment of another turn or development. In the smaller pieces, all included (except the Air de danse from Caligula ) in the first of a two-volume collection of the complete chamber works (EMI 62545, perhaps still available overseas), the young Augustin Dumay turned melodic lines to a confiding croon beside which Beikircher’s pleasantly punctilious readings seem faceless. Nor was Dumay alone—numerous performers, beginning with the 1931 Thibaud/Cortot go at the Sonata No. 1 and the Berceuse, have found lyric warmth where Beikircher evinces little more than beautiful tone. But this is, after all, Fauré, and even expert—rather than soaring or compelling—performances give pleasure. If Beikircher and Howat persuade rather than compel, their expertise cannot be denied.

Spaciously framed, sound is immediate and well balanced with the violin primus inter pares .

FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis