Gabriel Fauré: Capuçon teases us with what could have been

I have always been intrigued by unfinished works. And I don’t mean those ones that the composer wasn’t able to finish, but rather the ones that the composer intentionally destroyed.

That’s precisely the case with Gabriel Fauré’s Violin Concerto. It was supposed to be a three-movement concerto, and he only finished the first two, but its first is the only one that has survived. 

I have recently come across this piece thanks to Renaud Capuçon’s latest recording with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, in which he performs a set of works composed by one of the most prestigious French musicians.

The first movement of the Violin Concerto works as a great introduction and summary of what was supposed to come next. Fauré has never been associated with virtuosic music making, his approach was decidedly more focused on subtlety and refinement.

Fauré had a knack for reusing material that he never published. His most notorious example is the couple of symphonies that he didn’t complete. And as with these last two, the composer would include passages from the First movement into his string quartet, while passages from the second one were included in his Andante for violin and piano (Op. 75).

It is inevitable to wonder what would happen if Fauré had decided to finish his Violin Concerto. Perhaps it’s the nonconformist music lover that lives inside of us, but it is eloquent of how much I have loved this first piece of a concert that promised a lot. Let’s focus on enjoying what we have and make the effort to take this piece as a self-containing work.