Faure: Cello Sonatas - Alban Gerhardt, Cecile Licad (2012)

×

Faure: Cello Sonatas - Alban Gerhardt, Cecile Licad (2012)

Close

Following their triumphant Casals Encores disc, Alban Gerhardt and Cecile Licad are reunited for Fauré’s music for cello and piano. The two cello sonatas are among the masterpieces of the cello repertoire, looking back to the nineteenth century but also with an edginess that may well reflect the time in which they were written—during and immediately after the First World War. Remarkably, Fauré was in his seventies by the time he wrote them. There’s some debate as to how fast the last movement of the first sonata should go—so Alban Gerhardt has recorded two alternative versions, to be programmed to the listener’s taste.

Alongside the sonatas are some of Fauré’s most seductive bon-bons, including the famous Sicilienne and Élégie, and the so-called Papillon (so-named at his publisher’s insistence and much to Fauré’s annoyance—he hated fluffy titles).

Alban Gerhardt is of course a Hyperion regular and this is his ninth album for the label.

Composer: Gabriel Fauré
Performer: Alban Gerhardt, Cecile Licad

Reviews: I’m probably wrong, but I can’t recall another time in my life than the last 10–12 years when, it seems, we’ve had more great cellists in the world than ever before. I can recall many decades in which we seemed to have a surfeit of excellent pianists, yes; even the late, great Bruce Hungerford had trouble competing against his kith and kin back in the 1960s. Violinists, certainly; the widespread popularity of Heifetz, Menuhin, Szigeti, Stern, and Oistrakh helped spawn a virtual population of wonderful violinists. But I continue to hear excellent cellists on CD nearly every month now, and they are generally much more than just OK, they are superb in so many ways. Alban Gerhardt, who has been in the international spotlight for some time now, is yet another to finally come to my attention.


Moreover, Gerhardt excels in this music despite some very stiff competition: Paul Tortelier and Eric Heidsieck on EMI 74333, Steven Isserlis and Pascal Devoyon on RCA 68049, and Ina-Esther Joost Ben-Sasson and Allan Sternfield on Naxos 8570545. It’s hard to put into words, but Gerhardt has what I would describe as a buttery tone; it is not so much golden as it is a glowing amber, with a pliability and flexibility that almost seems to flow from note to note in a manner more liquid than solid. Of course, he is greatly aided in his interpretations by the equally liquid tone of Cecile Licad, who has long been one of those pianists I can always rely on to give me a performance that is both rhythmically alert and sensitively shaded. In French music, particularly, Licad, like Jean-Yves Thibaudet and several others, can do no wrong.


Thus, in these interpretations, the Fauré sonatas and various short pieces flow like butter. In a sense, such performances sometime detract from our absorption of the musical structure; with everything being so fluid, the music washes over us like an aural balm. But this is OK, too, since Fauré, like his successor Debussy, is a composer whose music is as much atmospheric as it is structural. One interesting feature of this recording is that Gerhardt and Licad give us two versions of the sonata No. 1’s finale, one slow (though quicker than the written tempo) and one at the more acceptable Allegro tempo taken by most cellists. (In the liner notes it is said that Tortelier, who practiced the last movement at the slower tempo, was convinced of the faster one by his accompanist, Eric Heidsieck, on the day they made their recording of it!) I prefer the faster tempo, believing (as many cellists do) that the metronome mark is a misprint.


Hyperion gives Gerhardt and Licad a nice studio ambience without drowning out the sound of their instruments in over-reverb. Good for them!