Piano Quartet No. 2 (Fauré)

[3] The Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux comments that the choice of this unusual form showed the composer's desire to break new ground and be his own man.

Nectoux adds that there was the advantage that the existing classical repertory contained very few top-flight piano quartets with the exception of Mozart's.

[5] It was given at the Société Nationale de Musique by Guillaume Remy (violin), Louis van Waefelghem (viola), Jules Delsart (cello) and the composer (piano).

[8] The first movement, which is in classical sonata form, opens with a unison string melody accompanied by relentless piano figuration.

The coda is primarily based on the opening theme but also reintroduces the molto tranquillamente melody now at double speed, and ends quietly in the major.

Cross-rhythms of 3/4 in a broad string melody give way to another smooth theme which forms a kind of "trio" interlude, although the perpetuum mobile of the main scherzo material continues behind it and carries the movement on to its conclusion.

The gentle undulating piano figure with which it opens was, according to Fauré, "a vague reverie" inspired by a memory of the evening bells of the village of Cadirac near his childhood home.

The movement builds gradually to a fortissimo climax before the return of the bell motif leads the music back to pastoral quiet.

Nectoux says of this movement, "The sense of space it creates, rapt and profound within a narrow range of notes, marks it out as being truly the music of silence".

[11] Nectoux expresses reservations about the finale, finding the second theme "rather on the heavy side" and a later section "unusually for Fauré, lacking in imagination".