Piano Quintet no. 1 in D minor Op. 89

In 1888-89 Fauré gave several concerts with the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, giving notably his two Piano Quartets. In 1890 he began to sketch a piano quintet but, dissatisfied with the result, set it aside for the Verlaine cycles, the Cinq Mélodies "de Venise" and La Bonne Chanson. When he returned to the work in 1894, he again met with difficulties. He took it up once more in 1903, and finally completed it two years later. He gave the première on 23 March 1906 at the Cercle Artistique in Brussels with the Ysaÿe Quartet. Listening to this work, nothing betrays its troublesome genesis. Fauré remarked: “The work of considerably recasting, balancing and improving the first movement was very hard. And now when I read it and hear it in my head, it seems to me that it has a very deceptive air of spontaneity.” The challenge was perhaps also to avoid the effect of a miniature orchestra, frequent with such instrumental forces. Fauré favours light textures and takes into account the instruments’ acoustic features. In the Molto moderato the long, lyrical lines of the strings are relieved by the liquidity of the piano part. The roles are more homogeneous in the Adagio, although the strings tend to take charge of the melodic dimension. The impulsive finale, Allegretto moderato, synthesises the different combinations heard hitherto in the work (which, like Franck’s Quintet, has no scherzo) with dense counterpoint and the iridescence of a crystalline piano part.