Recordings of both Faure’s piano quartets and quintets have become encouragingly frequent during the last few years, but Decca’s coupling of the First Quartet and the First Quintet is a novel enterprise. The opus numbers, 15 and 89 respectively, betray the chasm between Faure’s early exuberance and what Harry Halbreich in his insert-note nicely calls the “walled garden” of his later elliptical and complex manner. The Quintet opens with a classic example of how Faure so often expressed the strongest sentiments in an ethereal, other-worldly voice. And here his sweeping and elegiac theme, at once impassioned and serene, is embellished with “the myriad scintillating droplets of the piano part” (Halbreich, again) before entering that peculiar sense of darkness – at 4'18'', for example – of tragedy just kept at arm’s length. The finale’s archaic dance, too, is developed and ornamented with rare intricacy and lucidity and the sudden increase in pace and activity at 7'10'' is truly thrilling, given Pascal Roge’s and the Ysaye Quartet’s strong and resilient advocacy. Indeed, it is good to find Roge enlarging his Faure discography, after his no less successful recording of the violin and piano sonatas (with Pierre Amoyal, Decca, 2/95) and his tentative and, it must be admitted, sometimes diffident dip into the solo piano music (also Decca, 5/90).
However, the more popular and accessible First Quartet is less consistently successful. There have been more truly vivacious and voluptuous accounts of the Scherzo and its Trio. And if the finale is fast-flowing it is less than ideally urgent or propulsive, particularly as the music whirls towards its final apogee and home-coming. Decca’s sound and balance are exemplary and those primarily seeking the Quintet need look no further. For the Quartet I would recommend Domus, whose Gramophone Award-winning account is coupled with the Second Quartet in G minor.'