FAURE Piano Pieces Pristine Audio Direct PAKM015 [JW]: Classical CD Reviews- May 2006 MusicWeb-International

I happen to be delighted to see Kathleen Long’s early 1950s Decca Fauré recordings once more available. The correspondence on these performances “in another place” prompted me to dig out her 78s. This involves not just the slew of Mozart recordings she made for Decca, some of which have been collated by Dutton on an all-Long disc, but also her first recordings. She began her career in the studios recording for Compton Mackenzie’s National Gramophonic Society (N.G.S.). Whilst even then she was pegged as a Mozart specialist she was also to record Bach. As an aside someone should really get to grips with the N.G.S. discs, the market for which may well prove small, but the recordings of which - not always perfectly recorded it’s true - did enshrine some outstanding traversals of often unusual repertoire.

Long was for some time probably Britain’s leading exponent of the French repertoire. An allied assurance can be seen in her recording of the Third Delius Sonata with Sammons (Dutton) and in altogether less wistful form in Walter Leigh’s Concertino. Her Fauré recordings were not many but they were well received; I believe that this is the second of her recordings of the Thème and Variations. As one might imagine, her technical competence is high, though not infallible. She sounds especially harried in passages in the Fourth Nocturne.

She’s a direct exponent of the repertoire, clear-sighted, architecturally sure-footed, tonally bright. She may be considered bracingly extrovert where others prefer pastel. In this performance of the Nocturne in E flat major she hammers away in the treble – maybe the rather unhelpful original Decca set up exaggerates it – and points bass rhythms with a certain ebullience. Turn to the recordings of Germaine Thyssens-Valentin, made a few years later in 1956, and we find a totally different sound world; caressing, slower (always slower) and with subtler colouration. That very open Decca sound is present throughout but especially the Sixth Nocturne where Long can sound too urgent after immersion in Thyssens-Valentin – though she does bring a forceful romanticism to bear.

Long’s view was a consistent and entertaining one even if I find her rhythmically muddled in the B minor Nocturne. With the Barcarolles she tends to play the blunt outspoken guest to Thyssens-Valentin’s more coy and rhythmically more teasing host, the one rather rushing and the other wryly amused. Try the G major for an explicit contrast of that kind and the A minor Barcarolle for moments where the French player’s hinterland of expression proves too great and expansive for the Englishwoman’s. In the great Thème and Variations we hear Long’s clipped and highly accented approach bringing no-nonsense authority – though note that she gets through the theme in 1.38 and Thyssens-Valentin in 2.15, an indicator of their expressive responses throughout.

Originally released on two ten-inch discs the Pristine Audio team has worked hard on its restoration. I don’t have access to either of the LPs so can’t make a direct comparison, but if there’s a hint of stuffiness at the treble end I can say that the results are still commendably clear and involving. Andrew Rose and his team will earn kudos for this disc – check his website for the restructured pricing of his discs.

Jonathan Woolf


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