The Gramophone Choice

Piano Quintets – No 1 in D minor, Op 89; No 2 in C minor, Op 115 

Cristina Ortiz pf Fine Arts Quartet (Ralph Evans, Efim Boico vns Yuri Gandelsman va Wolfgang Laufer vc)

Naxos 8 570938 (63’ · DDD). Buy from Amazon

Fauré’s last years were dogged by increasing deafness, an unhappy marriage, a wholesale neglect of even his finest works and continuing grief over his father’s death. True, the ceaseless flow of invention has puzzled many listeners (‘verse innocent of punctuation’) but for others the First Quintet’s opening theme, heard beneath a spray of piano arpeggios, or the strange, archaic dance commencing the same work’s finale are features that can haunt the imagination for ever. The whirling figuration, too, of the Second Quintet’s Allegro vivo is again somehow part and parcel of an autumnal, other-worldly utterance that can be both heart-easing and disturbing.

Ideally balanced and recorded, Cristina Ortiz and the Fine Arts Quartet offer performances that are warmly affectionate, fluent and musicianly to the core. Surpassing even Domus’s fine Hyperion disc (see below), these are outstanding readings and Ortiz in particular is memorably sensitive to Fauré’s subtle and intricate piano-writing. 

Additional Recommendations

Piano Quintets Nos 1 & 2

Domus; Anthony Marwood vn

Hyperion CDA66766 (61‘ · DDD). Buy from Amazon

Domus play with an ardour and élan that would surely have delighted the composer (‘people play me as if the blinds were down’). The recordings are superb.