Alban Gerhardt (cello), Cecile Licad (piano) Hyperion CDA 67872 ***

Fauré wrote one of the all-time great cello hits. His Élégieof 1880 is both passionate and inward, gorgeous in melody and harmony. He wrote other pieces for cello and piano, four of which Alban Gerhardt and Cecile Licad include here ( Romance, Papillon, Sérénade, Sicilienne) and communicate with the persuasive advocacy that they bring to the Élégie. The composer's last cello works, sonatas written in 1917 and 1921, are harder nuts to crack, so elliptical and elusive that "distinguished monotony" was once proposed as a superficial listener's main impression. Gerhardt and Licad strive a little too hard to make them clear. The effect is at times not unlike brightening a TV's screen settings to watch a DVD that's actually been conceived in muted tones and with a limited, filtered palette of colour. You get what you want, but not quite what was intended. url.ie/4qdb