Graduation Recital, Héloïse Carlean-Jones, harp: FAURE — Impromptu in D-flat major, Op. 86

GABRIEL FAURE Impromptu in D-flat major, Op. 86
Héloïse Carlean-Jones, harp

Performed on Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)–one of the masters of the French art song repertoire–saw great musical change during his lifetime. He was born into a world where Chopin was still composing and left that world having heard the emerging musical idioms of jazz and atonality. For that reason, Fauré's music is often perceived as bridging the end of Romanticism with the dawn of Modernism in music. 

In the summer of 1904, Fauré was commissioned to write a harp piece for a competition at the Paris Conservatoire: the Impromptu in D-flat major, Op. 86. A young and talented harpist named Micheline Kahn won the competition, but much ambiguity surrounds the true authorship of the commissioned work. Because of his commitments as director of the Paris Conservatoire and as an active church organist, Fauré had little time for composition. According to a French harpist of the time, Fauré entrusted some portion of the harp commission to Alphonse Hasselmans, a professor of harp at the Conservatoire. It will never be known how much of the Impromptu was actually written by Fauré, but whoever the author may be the Impromptu in D-flat major remains a staple of the harp repertoire. The piece encompasses the world Fauré lived in, drawing on elements of Romanticism with its lyrical flourishes and wide range of emotions, as well as the improvisatory nature of music written at the dawn of the Jazz. 
—Grace Asunción

Learn more about this work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0NzaHxXd4I

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