PASCAL ROGÉ MARKS 75TH BIRTHDAY WITH HIS FIRST RECORDING OF FAURÉ’S COMPLETE BARCAROLLES
06 FEBRUARY 2026 (TORONTO, ON) — To mark the 75th birthday of Pascal Rogé, Decca Classics will release a new all-Fauré album on 3 April, alongside The Complete Decca Recordings, a comprehensive 43-CD box set documenting his recorded legacy for the label.
Released just ahead of the pianist’s birthday on 6 April, Rogé’s new album is devoted entirely to the music of Gabriel Fauré and features his first ever complete recording of the composer’s 13 Barcarolles. One of the most demanding and elusive cycles in the French piano repertoire, the Barcarolles span almost fifty years of Fauré’s compositional life. The programme is completed by the Dolly Suite for piano four hands, performed with Rogé’s wife and long-time duo partner Elena Font.
Rogé has long been celebrated as one of the finest exponents of French piano music. When Decca Classics’ A&R Director, Dominic Fyfe, invited Rogé to make a new disc for his 75th birthday, his immediate answer was the music of Fauré.
“I wanted to do something consistent, through which we could show the artistry and the genius of Fauré,” Rogé says in a booklet interview with Jessica Duchen. “The Barcarolles offered a journey through his entire life as a composer, from the early works to the very last pieces.”
The album was recorded in Paris at the Église de Saint-Pierre, chosen for its acoustic and atmosphere. Rogé later discovered a personal connection to the venue: it was there that his mother began her career as an organist, a discovery that added an unexpected emotional dimension to the sessions.
Alongside the new album, Decca Classics also issues Pascal Rogé The Complete Decca Recordings, bringing together his recordings for the label made between the late 1960s and the 1980s. Rogé was signed by Decca in 1969 at the age of 18, on the recommendation of his teacher Julius Katchen, and went on to become one of the label’s defining pianists of the period.
As an exclusive Decca artist during the 1970s and 80s, Rogé documented the French piano repertoire in depth, recording interpretations of Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Satie that have long been regarded as benchmarks. The 43-CD box set spans solo piano music, concertos, chamber works and song, and also includes repertoire by Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns and Fauré, presented in original jackets.
Many of these recordings have been unavailable in physical form for several years. For collectors, the set also includes previously unpublished material, among them Brahms’s Second Piano Sonata, left unreleased at the time for want of a suitable coupling, a selection of preludes by Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu, and a Mozart concerto recording conducted by Raymond Leppard, released for the first time on Decca.
The box set is accompanied by a newly commissioned essay by piano specialist Jeremy Nicholas, incorporating Rogé’s own recollections of the background to these recordings and his early introduction to Decca.
Rogé’s approach to sound and colour remains central to his playing. “I feel like a painter when I play. I see colours when I play and I try to add different ones. I use a lot of imagination: I will see nature, temperature, the wind, the moon. I need, always, to put an image behind the sound.”