The Fauré Quartett's recordings have covered much of the sparse piano quartet repertory, as well as adding to it with such experiments as popular song transcriptions. With this release, marking the group's 25th anniversary, the quartet turns to its namesake, and it emphatically does not desert its experimental spirit. One can see why the quartet reversed the chronological order of the two Fauré piano quartets; the second one plunges the hearer into passionate tumult from the start, and passion and intensity are what the group's readings are all about, even transferring the drama of the Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45, to its predecessor, the more delicate Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15. The performances are often driven by Dirk Mommertz's piano in one way or another. Is this "Germanic" Fauré in line with the group's origins? Maybe, considering the philosophically weighty notes that suggest Fauré and other composers were "looking for an elevated life that would free them from the banality of progress increasingly determined by the darker side of industrialisation," and even that Fauré's "toying with structural freedom ... ultimately firmly anchored his belief in the musical experience as an expression of the infinite." Or maybe it's just that Fauré was always meant to sound like this, that the weary lyricism usually given his music is a construction post hoc. Either way, this is very much the kind of performance that will elicit widely varying reactions for individual listeners. A plus for all of them may be the ingenious arrangements of five Fauré songs that serve as an entr'acte, and a minus for many will be the overly close-up sound recording from Berlin's Teldex studio; the producers were likely trying to heighten the drama, but it can stand on its own.