Piano Quartet No 1 / Piano Trio

The Pro Arte Piano Quartet was made up of leading London-based instrumentalists, many of whom also played in the Melos Ensemble of London. Pianist Lamar Crowson was, and remains, one of the great chamber music pianists of all time (and a soloist in his own right). Kenneth Sillito led, for several years, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Terence Weil was principal cellist of the English Chamber Orchestra and, like viola player Cecil Aronowitz, a founding member of the Melos Ensemble. Together they made three records for L'Oiseau-Lyre, the Decca subsidiary and they are all now issued on Decca Eloquence from Australia.

A handful of works date from the last few years of Fauré's life and they have been held by many commentators to be the quintessence not only of Fauré's own works but of all French music. The C minor Piano Quartet appeared in 1879 when Fauré was 34, and the influences of Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt are inevitably to be found, as in all chamber works of the period. The D minor Trio dates from 1923, a year before Fauré's death. He was now 78 and deaf, an infirmity that accentuated the inward-looking elements that had been present in his style from the beginning.