Piano Quintet No. 1 (Fauré)

[1] In late 1890 Fauré sketched out most of the quintet, but was unsatisfied with it, and laid it aside in favour of two song cycles – the Cinq mélodies "de Venise" (1891) and La Bonne chanson (1892–1894).

[2][3] The Ysaÿe Quartet and the pianist Raoul Pugno gave the work its first Paris performance the following month at the Salle Pleyel.

[16] The opening movement is seen by Fauré scholars as among the composer's finest compositions: for Nectoux it is "perhaps the most beautiful in the whole of his chamber music";[1] for Robert Orledge it is "one of Fauré's best, radiant with life and intensity";[20] Aaron Copland praises its technical mastery and comments that it "must convince the most recalcitrant ear of Faure's great powers of melody-making".

[21] The central slow movement opens in G Major, with the first theme played by the first violin to the accompaniment of undulating repeated chords on the piano.

[24] It begins with what the analyst Paul Conway calls "a bright, marching D major theme" for the piano, accompanied by pizzicato strings.

After a passage in B minor with leaping octaves, the first theme returns, blending with the second and then restated in pianissimo triplets before rising to a D major climax.

Orledge thinks that parts of it are "not among his happiest inspirations" and suggests that Fauré rushed to complete it while coping with his duties as newly appointed Director of the Paris Conservatoire.