20 NOTTURNO Fauré completed this sonata at the age of seventy-two, when he was going through a trying period, affected by the context of the Great War, health problems, the loss of loved ones, his worsening deafness . . . Does the work bear traces of this? Clément Lefebvre: It definitely has a tragic dimension, and there are moments when a form of violence emerges. The sonata begins in a sombre atmosphere, perturbed by jerky rhythms that produce a sense of struggle, but this is followed by the contrast of a rather sensual, exalted lyricism, expressed in an ever-rising movement. Eva Zavaro: ‘A magnificent ascent to the summits of joy’, as Charles Koechlin wrote! Fauré takes us through tunnels of modulations, harmonic progressions, convoluted canons, and suddenly we reach the top of the mountain, the music comes to a climax and we take flight! At the end of this exhilarating climb comes a feeling of hard-earned freedom. We tried to bring out this élan. The shift from darkness to light in this sonata is a particularly difficult transformation to achieve. Especially at the end of the Finale, where it accelerates into a formidable soaring peroration. Clément Lefebvre: The canonic device mentioned by Eva, which Fauré often used, offers the musicians a personal freedom of tone, the feeling of being able to play as a duo while retaining the intensity of our own expression. Here, it generates the sensation of a haunting dream on a feverish night: we reach for an object and just when it seems within our grasp, it moves away and eludes us. Although the sonata’s opening theme returns at the end like a happy memory, there’s still a smidgen of tension created by this severe canon that persists right to the end.
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