Fauré: The Complete Barcarolles - Trois Romances sans parole

FAURÉ Barcarolles (complete) . 3 Romances sans paroles , op. 17 • Charles Owen (pn) • AVIE AV 2240 (63:20) At the midcentury there were still artists active who had known Fauré and were cognizant of his world, however rapidly it may have been passing. One thinks of Marguerite Long, Yvonne Lefébure, Vlado Perlemuter, Robert Casadesus, Jean Doyen. As Fauré passed from living memory, a new generation of pianists approached his works with the generic, heavily pedaled, freely rubatomized manner that was the pianistic lingua franca of the 20th century’s last third. Matters of touch—light or sec, and sparing—and rhythmic steadiness were forgotten or ignored, and the public came to accept what was offered, that is, a sound very different from that which Fauré took for granted. The matter is not one of insisting upon slavish adherence to a “sacred tradition”—now, in any case, beyond recall—but of cultivating those oddments of style facilitating the optimum realization of