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Susan Waterfall presents: Fauré in His World
Sunday, July 7, 3:00 PM PDT
$20
Join us for the exciting premiere of Susan Waterfall’s new film, Fauré in His World. Immerse yourself in the composer’s world, and enhance your experience of the many Fauré offerings in this summer’s Festival: the Festival Orchestra’s performance of his Elégie; Jeffrey LaDeur and Kindra Scharich’s performance of his L’hiver a cesse; the Calder Quartet’s performance of his only string quartet; and the two narrated chamber music concerts, The Early Salon Years and Indian Summer.
Waterfall’s film explores the cultural milieu and creative life of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) through art and photographs from his era and excerpts from all his major works.
A Q&A will follow the screening. Thanks to Deborah Whigham and Gary Ratway for sponsoring this screening.
Written and directed by Susan Waterfall.
Art and photograph collection by Mina Cohen.
Filmed and edited by Julian Pollack.
2024 Featured Composer: Gabriel Fauré
For 2024, Susan Waterfall’s composer series will feature the innovative and influential Gabriel Fauré. Immerse yourself in his world and his music, and understand how his music evolved over his lifetime with narrated chamber recitals featuring exciting guest artists, and various other settings of Fauré’s work across the Festival.
Waterfall’s productions always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, an intimately conceived present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” -Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet
Music critic Alex Ross describes the music of Fauré, Proust’s favorite composer, as “a bittersweet, complicated happiness.” Gabriel Fauré’s songs and chamber music conjure the essence of Belle Epoque Paris with its unmatched assemblage of Symbolist and Impressionist artists. His music is the counterpart of gorgeous pre-Raphaelite imagery and the shapely lines of Art Nouveau. Throughout a life enriched by the salons, and by the beautiful and talented women of his era, Fauré created an intimate and subtle art, a welcome antidote to today’s world. The sensuality and elan of Fauré’s music are balanced by its purity and ineffable beauty.
Fauré wrote some of his most astonishing music in his late seventies, music strangely untouched by the Great War and its aftermath. This introspective and deeply expressive music evolved, like late Beethoven, from the isolation brought on by Fauré’s increasing deafness.
With a biographical film and three programs displaying his long and productive life you will learn all about this fascinating composer and feast in his sumptuous world. With this concert series and film, Susan Waterfall completes her exploration of the great triumvirate of composers who created the glorious efflorescence of late 19th and early 20th century French music.