Franck: Redemption

Read About This Recording

Though he garnered renown for his inspired improvisations at the fashionable Paris Basilica of Ste. Clotilde, and Liszt might declare his remarkable Six Pieces for organ (offered in this catalog) worthy of a place beside the masterpieces of Bach, Franck led the modest life of a parish organist and peripatetic teacher. Behind the mask of unworldly ineptitude, however, a prodigious genius, informed by the intense study of Bach and late Beethoven, was quietly active. With his works dogged by poor performances and the indifference of an opera loving public, it was left to an inner circle of Franck's pupils gathered about him late in his life - among them Augusta Holmes, Duparc, Castillon, d'Indy, Chausson, Ropartz and Lekeu - to grasp Franck's greatness.

The first version of Redemption, put together hurriedly for a Maundy Thursday offering in 1873 and performed from badly copied parts, was a disaster. At the prompting of Duparc and d'Indy, Franck revised the work (the version heard here), enriching the score as he reduced some of its more extreme demands. A subsequent performance by the Societe National failed to establish Redemption and it did not score a decisive success until 1896, six years after Franck's death. And that's the more surprising as it contains some of his most ravishing music - compelling melody aureoled in the effulgence of perhaps the richest harmonic palette in Western music making palpable, in ever growing radiance, a movement from darkness to light.

The libretto may be felt to be a species of nineteenth century pietistic claptrap, but try reading Cardinal Newman's Dream of Gerontius as literature - as Elgar did with the latter, Franck's music lifts the action of Redemption to a timeless platonic plane where mere words hardly matter. And this superb reading of the great symphonic intermezzo which heralds the sublime second part of Redemption is one of the key works of the Franck canon, at least as rich musically and as imposing as, say, the far more often heard Les Djinns or Le Chausseur maudit.

The performance is a labor of love and the offering is a Society exclusive. Grab it while you can!

-Adrian Corleonis

Contents

MHS Exclusive!

The Archangel, Beatrice Uria-Monzon, Mezzo-Soprano; Lambert Wilson, Narrator; Orfeon Donostriarra, Chorus; Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse; Michel Plasson, Conductor.