Spanning the 1880s to the composer’s final years, these nocturnes and barcarolles trace Fauré’s steady journey from Romantic inheritance towards a refined modernity—harmonies more elusive, textures more spare, emotion ever more concentrated. The barcarolles keep only the gondola’s stylised undulation: supple triple metres, continuous flow, and a finely shaded melancholy that can turn, in the later pieces, to austere abstraction and haunted intensity. The nocturnes, heirs to Field and Chopin yet filtered “through a veil”, favour reverie and inward meditation—an art of half-light where passion is often restrained to the point of poignancy, and where farewell becomes luminous rather than theatrical. Aline Piboule shapes this private landscape with a sense of breathing line and measured pacing, letting the music’s secret strength emerge without forcing its contours. The 1929 Gaveau adds its own poetry: a French timbre full in the bass and crystalline in the treble, making Fauré’s late sound-world feel both intimate and strangely radiant.