Hyperion Records

The transcription of one of Fauré’s most poignant love songs, Après un rêve, Op 7 No 1, was made in 1939, fifteen years after that of Nell, and it is number seven of the ‘Free Settings of Favourite Melodies’. Both pieces have a lucid quality in which Grainger subtly weaves the vocal line into the main texture of the piano writing, not unlike the treatment employed in some of his piano arrangements of folk songs. In the last years of his life, although frail, he would often be heard playing these two Fauré melodies.

from notes by Barry Peter Ould © 2002