ON NOVEMBER 14th CFFS WELCOMES: GABRIEL RICHARD AND JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC NEUBURGER FOR A MUSIVAL TRIBUTE TO GABRIEL FAURÉ

Two pictures of musicians on flyer announcing TRIBUTE TO GABRIEL FAURÉ WITH GABRIEL RICHARD AND JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC NEUBURGER

Thursday, November 14 at 7 p.m.

 

The CFFS, in partnership with Villa Albertine, the Embassy of France in the United States, the Duke Department of Romance Studies, and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, welcomes Gabriel Richard and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger.

 

The two musicians will join us for Tribute to Fauré, a performance marking the hundredth anniversary of Gabriel Fauré’s death (1845-1924). The Center for French and Francophone Studies at Duke, in partnership with New York University’s Maison Française and Princeton University, is proposing a series of events and performances dedicated to the afterlives of Fauré’s work in the 21st century, after an era focused on atonalism.

 

TRIBUTE TO FAURÉ

 

Pauline Viardot, Sonatine pour violon et piano

Louise Farrenc, Sonate Nr 1 Op 37

Ernest Chausson, Poème Op 25

Gabriel Fauré, Barcarolles Nr 2 & 6 

Gabriel Fauré, Sonate Op 13 Nr 1

 

 

The year 2024 marks the hundredth anniversary of the death of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), one of the most important European musical figures of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of an immense body of works for piano and symphony, he was also a genius of French melody and choral singing, and his Requiem is still renowned across the world.

 

Yet, to a certain extent, Fauré remains a discreet and marginal figure who deserves more sustained attention. Disinclined towards grand musical effects and emphases, he dedicated himself to the subtle forces and intimate forms of chamber music, melodies, and piano pieces. Driven by a quest for accuracy rather than brilliance, combining depth of feeling and balance of form, and influenced by a certain classicism, he also left his mark on a whole generation of musicians who attended his composition seminar at the Paris Conservatoire, including people like Nadia Boulanger.

 

Fauré had a crucial role in imposing a mixed-gender National Music Conservatory in France, and this concert is also an opportunity to celebrate female composers Pauline Viardot and Louise Farrenc, who were both related to him personally and aesthetically, and whose posterities have both been somehow obscured.

 

Gabriel Richard has been tenured first violin successively at the Orchestre de la Garde Républicaine, as violin solo at the Opéra de Lyon and at the Paris Orchestra as first violin, as well as the first violin of the Thymos String Quartet. The Quartet's recording of Dvorak with the label AVIE was awarded the Editor's Choice by Gramophone in 2012. The last recording in 2020 on Schubert with the Trout Quintet was awarded Critic’s Choice of the review Gramophone and BBC Chamber Choice.  Gabriel Richard is now Associate Research Professor in the Romance Studies and Music Department at Duke University in the US. He is the Artistic director of the Festival Fougères Musicales in Brittany in France.

 

Jean-Frédéric Neuburger’s work follows the path of the French composers of the twentieth century, with a strong interest for timbral evolution and orchestration that comes directly from the electro-acoustical world. He is commissioned by festivals and musical institutions such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, and Radio-France, and his works are performed by the Orchestre de Paris, the Chorus and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. As a concert pianist, he has been invited notably by the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the New-York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony. Published by Durand since 2012, he received the Lili and Nadia Boulanger prize from the Académie des Beaux Arts and the Hervé Dugardin prize from the SACEM in 2015.