Piano Quintet No. 2 (Fauré)

Dedicated to Paul Dukas, the quintet was given its premiere in Paris at a concert of the Société nationale de musique on 21 May 1921.

Fauré began working on his Second Piano Quintet in 1919 at Annecy-le-Vieux in Savoy, during his summer holiday from his duties as Director of the Paris Conservatoire.

[3] His reluctant retirement from the Conservatoire at the end of September 1920 left him more time for composition, which he found a great benefit in completing the quintet.

[4] The finished manuscript is dated March 1921, although the Fauré scholar Robert Orledge suggests that it was probably completed in Nice the previous month.

[6] The players were Robert Lortat (piano), André Tourret and Victor Gentil (violins), Maurice Vieux (viola) and Gérard Hekking (cello).

As in the first quintet, the opening is characterised by piano arpeggios, but now in the bass register: as the Fauré scholar Roger Nichols puts it, "no longer ethereal, but earthy and urgent".

[12] Nichols comments that this movement is one of Faure's "most astonishing inventions, pushing tonality as far as he would ever take it and (as any pianist will testify) subverting habitual finger patterns".

[15] Another leading critic, Louis Vuillemin, called it a masterpiece and wrote of "A deep and magnificent serenity of a great poet, wise and lyrical.

[19] The published score is dedicated to Fauré's friend and Parisian near neighbour, the composer Paul Dukas.