Sylvia

When Gabriel Faure was born in 1845, Felix Mendelssohn's famous violin concerto had just premiered and the German states had not yet been united. When he died in 1924, the old Europe had passed away in the devastating fires of World War I and the musical world was still recovering from the shock of Igor Stravinsky's scandalous 'Le sacre du printemps'. Living in these turbulent times, Faure strove in his music to unite the old and the new. He composed this piano quartet in 1871, just after finishing his studies at the Parisian 'École Niedermeyer' where he met Camille Saint-Saens. Still under the influence of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, he began to find his own musical voice, though his compositions were still limited to chamber music and songs. It was only many years later, when he worked as composition teacher at the Parisian conservatorium (he would later become its director), that he started composing longer works, including his wonderful Requiem.