This document provides background information on French composer Gabriel Fauré and his piano works, specifically his Impromptu No. 2 in F minor. It discusses Fauré's preference for classical restraint over virtuosic display in his piano music. It describes the influences of composers like Chopin, Schumann, and Mozart on Fauré's style. The passage then provides an analysis of Impromptu No. 2, describing its brilliant tarantella rhythm and lyrical sections, before noting its première and dedication.
This document provides background information on French composer Gabriel Fauré and his piano works, specifically his Impromptu No. 2 in F minor. It discusses Fauré's preference for classical restraint over virtuosic display in his piano music. It describes the influences of composers like Chopin, Schumann, and Mozart on Fauré's style. The passage then provides an analysis of Impromptu No. 2, describing its brilliant tarantella rhythm and lyrical sections, before noting its première and dedication.
This document provides background information on French composer Gabriel Fauré and his piano works, specifically his Impromptu No. 2 in F minor. It discusses Fauré's preference for classical restraint over virtuosic display in his piano music. It describes the influences of composers like Chopin, Schumann, and Mozart on Fauré's style. The passage then provides an analysis of Impromptu No. 2, describing its brilliant tarantella rhythm and lyrical sections, before noting its première and dedication.
This document provides background information on French composer Gabriel Fauré and his piano works, specifically his Impromptu No. 2 in F minor. It discusses Fauré's preference for classical restraint over virtuosic display in his piano music. It describes the influences of composers like Chopin, Schumann, and Mozart on Fauré's style. The passage then provides an analysis of Impromptu No. 2, describing its brilliant tarantella rhythm and lyrical sections, before noting its première and dedication.
Much of Faur's piano music is difficult to play, but is rarely virtuosic in
style. The composer disliked showy display, and the predominant characteristic of his piano music is a classical restraint and understatement. His works for the piano are marked by a classical French lucidity; [6] he was unimpressed by pianistic display, commenting of keyboard virtuosi, "the greater they are, the worse they play me." His early piano works are influenced in style by Chopin,[15] and throughout his life he composed piano works using similar titles to those of Chopin, notably nocturnes and barcarolles.[16] An even greater influence was Schumann, whose piano music Faur loved more than any other. [17] The authors of The Record Guide (1955) wrote that Faur learnt restraint and beauty of surface from Mozart, tonal freedom and long melodic lines from Chopin, "and from Schumann, the sudden felicities in which his development sections abound, and those codas in which whole movements are briefly but magically illuminated."[18] When Faur was a student at the cole Niedermeyer his tutor had introduced him to new concepts of harmony, no longer outlawing certain chords as "dissonant". [n 3] By using unresolved mild discords and colouristic effects, Faur anticipated the techniques of Impressionist composers.[6] Composed in May 1883, between the First Valse-Caprice and the blithely ardent Third Nocturne, Faur's Second Impromptu is a brilliantly nonchalant tarantella which gives way, over a still voluble accompaniment, to one of those breathtaking lyrical felicities with which his early and middle period works are studded. A virtuosic return of the opening whirl brings again the lyrical flight of confiding rapture, set off now by the tarantella's melodic outline, to finish with a dazzling flourish. Scintillant, charming, and superficial, Alfred Cortot noted that "It is, actually, the scheme of the first Impromptu -- but a little more individualized and nearer to the perfect model of the third." The Second and Third Impromptus were given their premires by Saint-Sans at a Socit Nationale concert of January 10, 1885. wiki
Dedicated to Mlle Sacha de Rebina,[55] the second impromptu maintains
an airy tarantella rhythm.[64] It is scored less richly than the first of the set, giving it a lightness of texture.[