Few composers have enjoyed a late flowering to compare with that of César Franck. Many of the great works in this recording were composed during...

Few composers have enjoyed a late flowering to compare with that of César Franck. Many of the great works in this recording were composed during his final decades and still stand today as powerful representatives of French music in the post-Franco-Prussian War period. The influence of Wagner can be heard in the poetic evocations of Les Éolides, while the magnificent Prélude, Choral et Fugue, much admired by Liszt, reinterprets well-known Baroque-era genres into an unforgettably expressive Romantic aesthetic. Widely acknowledged as one today’s great interpreters of French music, Jean-Pierre Armengaud presents an album of rarities composed for piano by Franck and arrangements of the composer’s works by distinguished musicians from the early 20th century.

REVIEWS:

The welcome César Franck revival rumbles on...here’s an interesting collection of piano music from veteran French pianist Jean-Pierre Armengaud. Three out of five of the pieces here are transcriptions; I’d argue that the Prélude, Fugue et Variations, originally an organ work from 1863, sounds far more appealing in Harold Bauer’s piano arrangement. Armengaud’s prelude is tender and lyrical, the ensuing fugue’s lines nicely delineated. The final section’s baroque flourishes look ahead to the opening of Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2, composed just a few years later. The tone poem Les Éolides is heard in an effective transcription by French composer Gustave Samazeuilh. Franck’s claggy harmonic language is easier to make sense of when you can hear the notes clearly, and Armengaud keeps the music moving.

The Prelude, Chorale and Fugue is marvellous...its three movements lasting around 20 minutes. Intensely chromatic and brilliantly organised, Armengaud is superb in the fugue’s radiant B major conclusion, the resonant acoustic really suiting the work. As a closer, there’s the posthumously published introduction to Ruth, Églogue biblique, a large-scale early work for voices and orchestra. Armengaud’s conviction brings it to life[.]

-- The Arts Desk

Franck wrote only two mature piano works, the splendid Prélude, Chorale et Fugue and the rather less fine Prélude, Aria et Finale. The first of these features here; otherwise, we have a collection of transcriptions, all except one by other hands.

We begin with the best-known, the version by Harold Bauer of the Prélude, Fugue et Variation, originally written for organ. Bauer did his work so skilfully that you would hardly think that this was not an original piano work, apart from a few spread chords – but then Franck used these anyway in his proper piano works. In this form it is a worthy companion to the two major piano works, and its gentle melody and limpid flow make a good contrast to the more powerful writing in those works. I liked Armengaud’s performance, in which he makes intelligent use of the Steinway third pedal, the sostenuto pedal, to sustain the deep bass notes while the melody and figuration occur above.

Les Éolides is a most attractive orchestral tone poem, inspired by a poem by Leconte de Lisle about what in English we call the Aeolids, the daughters of Aeolus, keeper of the winds in Homer. The original has an elaborate texture, which makes for complex piano writing in Samazeuilh’s piano transcription.

The sleevenote is helpful and the recording very good.

-- MusicWeb International