Louis Lortie - Faure:Apres Un Reve

This is the first volume in Louis Lortie's new series devoted to the music of Gabriel Faur�. As he states in the booklet notes, 'this album purposely travels through Faur�'s various creative periods, from easily appealing early pieces such as the Pavane and the m�lodie 'Apr�s un r�ve' through to the late and unjustly neglected Pr�ludes, a masterpiece of condensed harmonic and melodic audacity.' Released after four volumes in an ongoing Chopin series - 'an exceptionally high order of playing' (BBC Music) - this album, besides the masterful late Op. 103 Pr�ludes, unsurprisingly features in Lortie's words 'the romantic, post-Chopinesque genres of the Nocturnes and Barcarolles along with path- breaking small forms of neoclassical aesthetics such as the suite from Pell�as et M�lisande, here in a solo piano version highlighting the ambiguity of a canvas of pianistic and orchestral colourings that would be a major influence on Faur�'s successors'.