Hannes Minnaar pf

Challenge Classics

It takes a pianist of Hannes Minnaar’s stature and refinement to resolve the profound enigma of Fauré’s music.

Original rather than radical, Fauré continues to prompt lazy assumptions. For his detractors, his early work betrays the scent of the salon, while his later offerings baffle with their switch from florid eroticism to a bleaker mood. By contrast, for his admirers the later works are wont to become a haunting and lifelong passion.

Minnaar, a 37-year-old Dutch pianist, considers Fauré’s style ‘entirely his own, original and personal – from the first note to the last’. No pianist since the more Romantically inclined Germaine Thyssens-Valentin has shown a greater empathy for Fauré’s range. Whether in the ninth variation of the Thème et Variations, which for Cortot ‘sinks down like a star in the evening’, or in the 13th Nocturne, ‘riven with bitterness and despair’(Copland), Minnaar’s sympathy and command never falter.