Classical album review: César Franck complete orchestral works

Belgium’s greatest composer, César Franck (1822-1890), is a man with a hidden past. He was a late developer and decades of his early output are neglected in favour of his mature work. His great Symphony in D minor is one of the most distinctive of 19th-century symphonies.

His late works of programme music have also held their place in the repertoire, and his Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra pack real punch. This new, four-disc, bicentenary collection shows his teenage and pre-teenage works for piano and orchestra to be glittering display pieces, a world away from his familiar work.

But by his mid-20s he had essayed a substantial, brooding symphonic poem on Victor Hugo’s Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne that predates Liszt’s “invention” of the genre. And another real rarity here is the 1883 ballet Lutte de l’hiver et du printemps, from the opera Hulda. My own early exposure to the extended symphonic poem, Psyché, has left me with a soft spot for its often meandering course.

The recordings here, made over more than a decade, with five conductors, two pianists and a chorus, are guaranteed to give you a picture of Franck that you just won’t find elsewhere.

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