Mehldau performs four preludes, from a thirty-seven-year span of Gabriel Faure's career, as well as a reduction of an excerpt from the Adagio movement of his Piano Quartet in G Minor. Here Mehldau's four compositions that Faure inspired are presented in a group, sandwiched between two sections featuring the French composer's works. Discussing the Apres Faure album in his note, Mehldau says: "If the sublime foreshadows our mortality, this music might communicate the austerity of death-Faure's as it approached him, but also the apprehension of our own. We find a kinship with the composer finally, in the form of a question that he tossed off into the future, to us. I have composed four pieces to accompany Faure's music here, to share the way I have engaged with Faure's question, with you, the listener."This format is similar to my After Bach project," he continues. "The connections are less overt, but Faure's harmonic imprint is on all four. There is also a textural influence, in terms of how he presented his musical material pianistically-he exploited the instrument's sonority masterfully, as an expressive means. So, for example, in my first 'Prelude,' melody is welded to a continuous arpeggiation, both part of it and hovering above it; in my 'Nocturne,' it is possible to hear the harkening chordal approach in the opening of Faure's No. 12."
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