Fancy Opus 79 and Playback Piece for Flute and Piano
Gabriel Fauré

This exquisite fantasy of Fauré is one of the jewels of chamber music, which we owe to his activity at the Paris Conservatory. Paul Taffanel, who taught the flute there, had invited his colleague to compose a piece of virtuoso competition. In 1898 he received the manuscript from Fauré with the explicit recommendation "to modify the features which would be impracticable", before using it for the examination. Since the manuscript is now lost, we do not know how much Taffanel has made changes - in any case, this results in a brilliant competition piece, to which we add in our edition a small Adagio without opus number that Fauré also dialed in 1898 for sight reading exams at the conservatory.