This is the fifth and final volume of Paul Crossley's complete recording of Faure's solo-piano music; it makes a richly satisfying conclusion to the cycle. None of the music here is played at all frequently at concerts (save the Ballade, and even that is seldom heard in its original and vastly preferable solo version), but all of it deserves to be. The Songs without words are student pieces from Faure's teens, and one hardly expects them to be characteristic, but in retrospect how Faurean the first of them seems, drawing subtle contrast from modulation alone, with no need to invent a conventional trio section. Although its charmingly tender tune is an obvious homage to Schumann and Mendelssohn, that of the third is genuinely French in its delicious not-quite-sentimentality, and in the crisp brilliance of the second (beautifully played) Faure emulates Mendelssohn without needing to fear the comparison. The Mazurka is an hommage rather than a homage: Chopin is as much an object of curious nostalgia to Faure as of admiration, and he is evoked with elusive, shy restraint.
The Valses-caprice, however, are Faure at his most individual. They are kaleidoscopic pieces often juggling four or five seemingly quite dissimilar ideas, apparently at random but in fact with great resourcefulness and wit. The very title Valse caprice implies 'light' music, and each of them contains at least an element of this: in No. I it is an almost literal reference to Johann Strauss 11, in No. 2 (immediately after an opening sentence has implied that this is to be a 'serious' waltz in the manner of Schumann) it is a rumbustious knees-up. But in each case these popular elements are woven into a texture in which motives recur develop and transform each other, often in unexpected ways ('development' may mean elaboration; it may also mean simplification): unlikely relationships are demonstrated, improbable alliances are established, expectations contradicted and rugs pulled from beneath the bemused listener. But there is tenderness and subtlety here as well as humour, and a swiftness of intellect and invention that are more central to Faure's genius than his misleadingly over-emphasized 'charm'.
Crossley's performances have plenty of that quality, and abundant virtuosity and beauty of tone, but it is his understanding of the scope of Faure's intelligence that makes him such a fine exponent of this music. It is characteristic of him that the Ballade, which with its misguided orchestral stuffing can seem an unduly protracted miniature here emerges as a work of poised and restrained but sincere emotional substance. The recorded sound, as throughout this most distinguished series, is excellent.'