Gabriel Fauré

Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor, op. 89 (N 158) - Piano Quintet No. 2 in C minor, op. 115 (N 188)

Gabriel Fauré's two Quintets for Piano and Strings are highlights of his oeuvre and milestones in the repertoire of piano quintets. This critical edition will spark new interest in these masterpieces.

The first quintet was completed in early 1906 and had the longest history of all Fauré's works, eighteen years in total. Like César Franck's Quintet in F minor, it is laid out in a "romantic" three-movement form. The second Quintet op. 115 was written between 1919 and 1921 in the composer's last great creative period. The four movements embody a spacious, luminous, freely dissonant style within an outwardly classical form.

The main themes of the first movements of both quintets offer two of the most beautiful melodies Fauré ever wrote. The middle movement of Op. 89 is one of Fauré's most architecturally thought-out scores, full of metrical complexity, while the Scherzo of Op. 115 is a dizzying 'tour de force' of unclassifiable scales. In the finales of both quintets, Fauré created themes and formal structures not found anywhere else in his chamber music.

In this edition, Carlo Caballero settles the inconsistencies in the original editions between the score and the string parts, carefully preserving the musically justified deviations. The editor also discusses Fauré's use of double stems in the piano part, as well as the particular intentions behind the designations 'sostenuto', 'espressivo' and 'marcato'.