Stéphane Degout’s Fauré song cycles album review — expressive and intimate

There has already been one major recording of Fauré’s songs in the past two years — French tenor Cyrille Dubois was the sole singer in a three-CD set that comprised all the composer’s mélodies, including those hitherto regarded as the preserve of female singers.

Now, to mark Fauré’s centenary, here is Stéphane Degout, who restricts his programme to the five song cycles mostly sung by a male voice. His single disc offers an appealing alternative for those who do not want Fauré’s entire song output or who find Dubois’s supersensitive singing on the pale side.

As a baritone, Degout has deeper colours at his disposal. This holds at bay any suggestion of Fauré as a lightweight composer of poetic trifles, though the flipside is that his performances, accompanied without exaggeration by Alain Planès, can tend towards the solid and sober.

What inexhaustibly expressive songs these are. The simple appeal of Poème d’un jour hardly prepares the listener for the subtly complex Verlaine settings of La Bonne Chanson. In Mirages, the music circles in repeating patterns, like ripples in the water, while L’Horizon chimérique refines those harmonies to stress Fauré’s unique musical personality. 

Degout’s high-quality voice and fine legato are a constant pleasure, as is the Pleyel Grand Patron piano from 1892 played by Planès. Among the competition, the intimacy of Dubois’s Fauré, not to mention his detailed engagement with the poetry, has a strong claim. For sheer verbal and musical flair, however, Gérard Souzay is hard to beat, especially in his early recordings.

★★★☆☆

‘Fauré: Five song cycles’ is released by Harmonia Mundi