Fauré: La bonne chanson & Other Songs Nicky Spence, Julius Drake, Piatti Quartet

• Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924): La bonne chanson, Op. 61:
• 1 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 1, Une Sainte en son auréole 02:39
• 2 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 2, Puisque l'aube grandit 02:01
• 3 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 3, La lune blanche luit dans les bois 02:37
• 4 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 4, J'allais par des chemins perfides 02:01
• 5 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 5, J'ai presque peur, en vérité 02:22
• 6 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 6, Avant que tu ne t'en ailles 02:41
• 7 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 7, Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été 02:50
• 8 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 8, N'est-ce pas ? 02:32
• 9 Fauré: La bonne chanson, Op. 61: No. 9, L'hiver a cessé 03:09
• Lydia, Op. 4 No. 2:
• 10 Fauré: Lydia, Op. 4 No. 2 02:34
• Chanson d'amour, Op. 27 No. 1:
• 11 Fauré: Chanson d'amour, Op. 27 No. 1 01:59
• Le secret, Op. 23 No. 3:
• 12 Fauré: Le secret, Op. 23 No. 3 02:38
• 5 Mélodies de Venise, Op. 58:
• 13 Fauré: 5 Mélodies de Venise, Op. 58: No. 2, En sourdine 03:04
• Les roses d'Ispahan, Op. 39 No. 4:
• 14 Fauré: Les roses d'Ispahan, Op. 39 No. 4 03:00
• 5 Mélodies de Venise, Op. 58:
• 15 Fauré: 5 Mélodies de Venise, Op. 58: No. 1, Mandoline 01:57
• Notre amour, Op. 23 No. 2:
• 16 Fauré: Notre amour, Op. 23 No. 2 02:02
• Les berceaux, Op. 23 No. 1:
• 17 Fauré: Les berceaux, Op. 23 No. 1 02:38
• Poème d'un jour, Op. 21:
• 18 Fauré: Poème d'un jour, Op. 21: No. 1, Rencontre 02:03
• 19 Fauré: Poème d'un jour, Op. 21: No. 2, Toujours 01:28
• 20 Fauré: Poème d'un jour, Op. 21: No. 3, Adieu 02:14
• Automne, Op. 18 No. 3:
• 21 Fauré: Automne, Op. 18 No. 3 02:51
• Clair de lune, Op. 46 No. 2:
• 22 Fauré: Clair de lune, Op. 46 No. 2 03:05
• Dans la forêt de septembre, Op. 85 No. 1:
• 23 Fauré: Dans la forêt de septembre, Op. 85 No. 1 03:18
• Total Runtime 57:43

Info for Fauré: La bonne chanson & Other Songs

Fauré’s songs represent his art at its most radiant, demonstrating the composer’s exceptional gift for melody as well as his acute sensitivity to the subtleties of the greatest French poets of the day. In La bonne chanson, the result is a song cycle like few others: an ecstatic hymn to the beloved (the composer’s mistress) which celebrates the triumph of love. Here, it provides a glorious opening to Nicky Spence and Julius Drake’s all-Fauré recital.

Gabriel Fauré wrote his first song, Le papillon et la fleur, as a boy of sixteen in the Niedermeyer School’s canteen, encouraged by his piano teacher, Camille Saint-Saëns. It was the start of an enchantment with art song that lasted all his life. With his exceptional gift for melody and its intimate connection with the subtlety and flow of the French language, plus his skill at condensing musical ideas, the genre seemed made for him.

Fauré’s output of songs embraced some sixty years and much of his reputation rested on them. Interviewed in Le Petit Parisien in 1922, he remarked: ‘Yes, they’ve been sung a lot … Not enough to make my fortune, but too much even so. My colleagues in the profession reckoned that as I’d done so well in the medium, I ought to stick to it all the time!’

Fauré set some of the finest Francophone poets of his day, starting with Victor Hugo and progressing through Théophile Gautier, Leconte de Lisle and Armand Silvestre. Paul Verlaine’s work provided a particularly happy match of artistic minds and had already inspired some of Fauré’s finest songs before he began work on La bonne chanson in 1892. In it, he turns nine of Verlaine’s poems to his fiancée Mathilde Mauté into an ecstatic, virtually pantheistic hymn to the beloved.

This rare creation, a song cycle that celebrates love’s triumph, brings to fruition the atmospherically lyrical writing of Fauré’s earlier music, yet bursts those boundaries to anticipate the transformation of his style later in life. Intensely chromatic, harmonically radical, La bonne chanson is also exceptionally passionate. When Fauré’s friend and mentor Saint-Saëns first heard it in 1894, he thought that its composer had gone ‘completely mad’.

Unfashionable though it is to link a composer’s music with events in his life, it’s probably no coincidence that it emerged from a time in which Fauré was enjoying his first truly fulfilling love affair: with Emma Bardac, a witty, intelligent married woman and a fine soprano, to whose young son he was giving music lessons. ...

Nicky Spence, tenor
Julius Drake, piano
Tim Gibbs, double bass
Piatti Quartet

Nicky Spence
Hailed by The Daily Telegraph as ‘a voice of real distinction’, Nicky Spence’s unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. BBC Music Magazine named him ‘Personality of the Year’ in 2022; he was made an OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours, and in 2024 was the winner of the RPS Singer Award. Nicky took up the position of President of the Independent Society of Musicians for the 2024/25 season.

Recent stage highlights include roles as Siegmund in Wagner’s Die Walküre for the English National Opera, Loge in Das Rheingold at La Monnaie and Erik in Der fliegende Holländer for Grange Park Opera, Albert Gregor in Janáček’s Věc Makropulos for the Deutsche Staatsoper, Edmundo de Nobile in Adès’s The Exterminating Angel for the Opéra national de Paris, and the title role in The Excursions of Mr Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century at the Brno Janáček Festival.

Nicky gives recitals internationally, including the recent curation of a residency at Wigmore Hall, and records prolifically. His discography includes Strauss lieder with Roger Vignoles (Hyperion), Brahms’s Liebeslieder-Walzer with Joseph Middleton and Dylan Perez (Resonus Classics), the title role in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (Alpha), Handel’s Brockes-Passion with the Academy of Ancient Music and Richard Egarr (AAM Records), and works by Britten, Jonathan Dove, Pavel Haas, Alun Hoddinott, Buxton Orr, Schumann, Wagner, Wolf, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Vaughan Williams.

In 2020, he won the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award and the Gramophone Solo Vocal Award for his critically acclaimed recording of Janáček’s The diary of one who disappeared, and in 2024 he was awarded the Leoš Janáček Memorial Medal at the Janáček Brno Festival for his contribution to the performance and promotion of the composer’s works on the international opera and concert stages.

Julius Drake
The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and enjoys an international reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field, collaborating with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc. His passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for Wigmore Hall (London), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), 92nd St Y (New York) and the Pierre Boulez Saal (Berlin).

Julius’s many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion Records, of which the Barber Songs, Schumann Dichterliebe & other Heine settings and Britten Songs & Proverbs won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards respectively. Other recordings include celebrated albums with Ian Bostridge, Alice Coote, Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Matthew Polenzani, Anna Prohaska and Brindley Sherratt. Julius’s recording of Janáček’s The diary of one who disappeared for Hyperion, with tenor Nicky Spence and mezzo-soprano Václava Housková, won both a Gramophone Award and a BBC Music Magazine Award in 2020.

Concert highlights include recitals at La Scala (Milan) and the Munich Festival with Ludovic Tézier; visits to the Pierre Boulez Saal for the series ‘Lied und Lyrik’; piano-duet recitals with Elisabeth Leonskaja, including at the Schubertiade Festival in Austria; frequent performances at the Wigmore Hall, including its 2024–25 season opening concert to commemorate Fauré’s anniversary; and recitals in the USA and Europe with Fleur Barron, Ian Bostridge, Gerald Finley, Mercedes Gancedo, Christoph Prégardien, Julia Kleiter, Günther Groissböck and Roderick Williams.

Booklet for Fauré: La bonne chanson & Other Songs