The organ works we tend to associate with Franck are those written in his
last years by which time Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) and Charles Marie
Widor (1844-1937) had produced much of their output. But it was his earlier
works that influenced them, in the great French organ revival. The first
of these volumes clearly concentrates on a flush of opus numbers Op 16-21,
with Op 19 squeezed onto the second disc with the last works. This isn't
the complete organ oeuvre but comprises the normal two-volume pantheon otherwise
available, as with Jennifer Bate on Unicorn Kanchana. With their close and
fairly spectacular sound, ideal organ, very fine playing and the brisk tempi
of organist Lebrun, there's no reason to hesitate if you haven't already
acquired these works. Bate's timing for Chorale No. 2 was 14'07" as opposed
to 12'57" for Lebrun. Other timings come near 13' so Lebrun's approach, direct,
less richly involved than Bate, helps the structural impact of the chorales.
In the earlier sectional works dating from 1862 (published 1868) Lebrun is
challenged with sustaining cogency and interest.
His way with the Fantasie Op 16 is as delicate as a Cavaillé-Coll
Organ allows. The Fantasie is a strange work, difficult at first to
adjust to in specific gravity; mostly slow, with quiet surges of churchy
passions. The Grand Pièce Symphonique Op 17 on the other hand,
with its slow opening succeeded by differing speeds and textures, is easy
to grasp sectionally. One is occasionally battered into belief that it's
a complete coherent piece; it hardly matters. It's the fledgling work from
which Franck was to launch his other large-scale works (his early piano concerti
aside). Beethoven is the model here, with the recapitulation of themes, in
the 9th Symphony, that Franck was later to evolve into his cyclic forms.
Chromatically, Liszt and Wagner are never far away. The Allegro non troppo
e maestoso of this work launches into a thrilling fugue, and real Lisztian
paragraphs, redolent of the virtuoso Franck's father wanted him to be. And
the Allegretto ma non troppo of the Prélude, fugue et variation
Op 18 (just to get ahead of ourselves) is a pure Liszt fugue straight
out of the Piano Sonata in b minor of 1853, nine years earlier than this
group of works. The Andante of the Grand Pièce is sweetly
religiose, but with rays of pure Franckian melody. The Allegro non troppo
e maestoso marking returns to round off Franck's first substantial
large-scale work of genius. Its five-note syncopated motto theme is wonderfully,
memorably portentous, and is transfigured in a radiant shower of Lisztian
Gretchen music from the Faust Symphony. It's taken with a peroration
and ennobling of the motto straight off to Heaven - and a truly Platonic
Cavaillé-Coll (surely Heaven, if it has an organ, must have one of
these, to Bach and Reger's consternation). Bate takes 2'50" longer, in her
more reverberant acoustic.
The Prélude, fugue et variation Op 18 is the most celebrated
of this group, chromatically and structurally recognisable as the Franck
of the last 15 years. The last movement is pure Franck, lyrical, elegiac
yet final. It's an unusual conclusion, again recalling how Liszt ended his
Piano Sonata, quietly. Prière Op 20 is what it suggests, though
longer at 12'23" than such pieces tend to warrant. It's more a meditation,
sectional with a kind of return to the opening - the kind of work Messiaen,
through others, was to build on. The Final Op 21 crumphorns its fanfares
with attractive French gothic vulgarity. One imagines this varied piece ended
various services. It launches into an allegro molto second subject
that quietens, then returns to the crumphorns to vary positively till the
end.
Vol. 2 opens with the Pastorale Op 19, more Latinate than the German
structural gestures elsewhere. It's thus allied to the succeeding
Prière Op 20 and Final Op 21 in exploiting freedoms
not fully taken up in fuller form until later. The central scherzando section
enlivens the work, shafted as it is with forest murmurs and snakes in the
Arcadian grass. This dates, like its companions, from 1862. The Trois
Pièces are from 16 years later, and by 1878 Franck was beginning
to be fully established in his bande-à-Franck, with the Piano Quintet
(that so infuriated the jealous Saint-Saëns with its Augusta
Holmès-inspired fervour) just a year off. They are regarded as perhaps
more secular pieces than their predecessors. Certainly secular works and
passions were beginning to re-animate Franck just then. A Fantasie in A opens
with a noble, echoed theme. It develops into a repetitive two-note ascending
figure offset by four tied ones descending the chromatic scale, almost
pre-echoing the first movement of the orchestral symphony of 1889. In fact
melodically this piece must be the closest model to that work. The cyclic
form emerges triumphant, and one can see it in Piano Quintet colours too.
Bate takes just a little longer, 12.52, as opposed to 12.14. I enjoyed her
grandeur, though felt Lebrun's nudging of the main theme's tempo was just
right. Bate has a sweeter top register, or elects to employ one. Some of
the stops sound a little more transparent too. Her instrument and acoustic
sharpen Franck's more inflated meringues with a touch more lemon.
The Cantabile serves as a small Non troppo lento movement, again wholly
Franckian in its descending figures. The Pièce héroique
is an almost priapic struggle of the hen-pecked man who was putting on
late cubits and falling in love, perhaps. Unfair perhaps, but emblematic
of Franck's shifting and secularised interests entering a broader music world
amid reverent, adoring pupils. Something of success and defiance shines through
here. Again, the almost tragic stature of this work reminds one of the
sound-world of the Symphony. The Allegro maestoso isn't quite the
symphony's Allegro non troppo but hardly far off.
The Trois Chorales are Franck's masterworks for organ, completed the
year he died, 1890, following an omnibus accident that May, proving fatal
six months later. Like Janacek he flowered late and then died prematurely
through an accident. Janacek had said he'd almost finished what he wanted
to say and was on the point of revising unfinished works. Franck's last works
might not have been so comfortingly intentioned. And they're not comforting
in his old religiose manner. Lebrun takes them swiftly. The first in a radiant
E major, is more in the old manner, a calm before two minor storms. On pianissimo
wind stops it builds affirmatively. No. 2 in b minor darkens into the light
on a four-note theme very gently for seven minutes, then the gothic is back,
arching themes to the roof in a silvery series of stops that never overload
with cholesterol. Here, clear textures are needed. As mentioned, Bate's timing
for Chorale No. 2 was 14'07" as opposed to 12'57". And here, a reverberant
transparency is telling, though Lebrun carries through with great linear
strength. In truth, there's little between these organs. Lebrun is able to
call on clarity too, and is often thrilling. The piece ends quite unexpectedly
in minor-toned contemplation. No. 3 is the greatest, with a repeated a minor
introductory theme - syncopated dipping and rising through a recitation of
itself that moves through slower trumpet stops into some superb melodies.
Franck's own markings were more precise than his contemporaries, yet he played
with great freedom. His own organ at St Clotilde was unusual, old-fashioned
by later Cavaillé-Coll standards, but with a powerful crumphorn and
bassoon-oboe stop, positive, and Swell. This gives some indication of the
textures we can lose, unless made aware of them. Franck is a greater colourist
on the organ, and thus in the orchestra, than he's given credit for. Lebrun
adds a note that he elected this present instrument, as it was his own. Details
are needed. This 72-manual Cavaillé-Coll Organ dates from 1890-97
for the great amateur Baron Albert de L'Espée whose neighbours threatened
him with legal action. He gave it to the Church and installed a 20-manual
one instead. Another 46-manual instrument was destroyed with one of his chateaux
when the Germans left Paris in 1944 (the particular notes on this section
by Yves Rousseau say 1945). In sum, an excellent bargain, very well-played
and recorded. There are brighter-toned organs, as Bate demonstrates but that's
niggling between heroic installations.
Simon Jenner
Eric Lebrun, Cavaillé-Coll
Organ, Saint-Antoine des Quinze-Vingts, Paris, November 1997
