St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Fauré. Franck

Conductor: Marc Minkowski

The programme includes:
Gabriel Fauré. Pavane, Op. 50
César Franck. Symphony in D Minor
Gabriel Fauré. Élégie, Op. 24
Gabriel Fauré. Requiem, Op. 48

Soloists
Anastasia Kalagina (soprano), Yevgeny Ulanov (baritone)
Oleg Sendetsky (cello)

Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre

Principal Chorus Master: Andrei Petrenko

Gabriel Fauré’s Pavane was composed in 1887, a time when the best music about Spain was being written by French and Russian composers while the country beyond the Pyrenees itself preferred to maintain an enigmatic silence. By basing his work on the rhythm of the slow processional Spanish court dance of the same name and embellishing it with a melody full of heavenly bliss and saturating it with “spicy” harmonies, Fauré paid tribute to the Frenchmen who had elevated the status of Spanish music. The main theme of the Pavane ebbs and flows in a series of harmonic and melodic climaxes, conjuring up a cool, somewhat haunting, Belle époque elegance.
The piece is scored for only modest orchestral forces consisting of strings and one pair each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns. The Pavane, however, became so popular that there are now myriad instrumental versions.

Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, unlike the works by Mozart and Verdi in the same genre, does not focus the listener’s attention on the idea of death and scenes of the Day of Judgement. Instead of gloominess here there is tranquil sorrow, instead of images of hellish suffering there are images of Heaven and instead of despair there is hope. Fauré wrote to a critic in 1902 that “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death, and somebody called it a lullaby of death. But that is how I see death - as a happy deliverance, an aspiration to happiness above rather than as a painful experience.” The almost intimate and deeply human music of Fauré’s Requiem stands apart for its expressive melodies and the impressionistic subtlety of the harmonious colours. Almost immediately the Requiem became a favourite at concert halls, although Fauré’s insistently stressed his work’s liturgical nature.

Fauré’s elder contemporary and fellow Frenchman César Franck spent much of his life as the organist at the Church of Sainte Clotilde in Paris. This modest and religious man who loved peace never strived for glory and composed serious and deep music such as the Symphony in D Minor, in which romantic élan and freedom of expression are restrained in strict and clear classical forms.

Age category 6+

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