I’ve never really heard much by Faure; I’m a big fan of his Requiem, but that’s about all. The cast of assembled players here is pretty well all-star. Everyone knows Stern & Ma, but Ax & Laredo are close to rock-stars in the classical world, even if not so much in the crossover world. But I really didn’t take to this album at all. The sound is pretty bad, really quite flat and not mixed very well. The sound is muddy and everything just seems to run together into a sonic soup. Hard to say if the pieces themselves are particularly weak or not. I honestly think the majority of the problem here really is the engineering & production. Might have to check these pieces out in another version. 1 star.
tl;dr – horrible production creates such an annoying sonic soup that I’m not even sure if the pieces themselves are any good or not. 1 star.