How do you approach this typically Faurean flow? What is its ultimate destination? It’s a very idiosyncratic flow: Fauré often blurs the metre, dilutes phrases, goes over the bar line as if he wanted to abolish it. You always have to go along with the current, whether it tends towards fluidity, passion, struggle or calm. Fauré’s time is not mathematical; the performer can get lost in it. I felt it was important always to sustain the intensity of the melodic line, the tension contained in the phrases, which is all the greater when they’re slow and piano. The sudden flare-ups that follow set that tension free, provoking a rush of oxygen. You want to stay at the level of these peaks, but you have to come back down and find the peace and quiet that most of the codas bring. Fauré has an incomparable gift for rounding off his pieces, whether in the incandescence of no.9, which ends in an apotheosis like the mélodie ‘Avant que tu t’en ailles’ from La Bonne Chanson, in the sublime coda that closes no.12, or in the poignant drama and the final sigh at the conclusion of the Thirteenth Nocturne, whose coda surpasses all the others, in my view. 1. ‘A vast and tender calm’: a line from Verlaine’s poem ‘L’Heure exquise’, set by Fauré in his song cycle La Bonne Chanson. The phrase is used by Vladimir Jankélévitch in Le Nocturne (Paris: Albin Michel, 1957). The other references to Jankélévitch come from Fauré et l’inexprimable (Paris: Plon, 1974). (Translator's note) 2. An implement used by artists to smudge charcoal or pencil marks. (Translator's note) 29 THÉO FOUCHENNERET
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