LDV176.8

20 CÉSAR FRANCK_The complete organ works The set of Six Pièces for organ of 1862 begins with a Fantaisie - one of two Franckwrote for the organ. It is dedicated to ‘his friend,MonsieurA. Chauvet’, the organist at the Church of the Trinité. A concert piece, very different from the Fantaisie inAmajor, it is in the formof a sonata in three movements, two slow outer movements enclosing a more animated episode. A Poco lento is succeeded by the central Allegro cantando and, after a few transitional bars marked 'quasi lento', the work ends with an Adagio. The Fantaisie in A major is the first piece in the Trois Pièces pour le Grand Orgue of 1878. One should not judge this uneven piece too severely; it has some very felicitous moments. Think of the harmonic interest of certain modulations, of the chromaticism of some of the melodic lines. lmmediately preceding the Final in B flat in the 1862 volume, the Prière, op.20 is its exact opposite: we already hear Franck at his greatest in this piece which in many respects prefigures the composer’s later development and marks the revival of the French organ school. The second work in the Trois Pièces of 1878, Cantabile , is the shortest of Franck’s great organ compositions. A kind of middle movement of the symphony constituted by the set (and which, once again, is a symphony in three parts), it seems to correspond, sixteen years later, to the Prière op.20 from the 1862 set, but this time with a technical and human maturity that reveals the Christian composer, a prey to the same interrogations, trying to find the answer to them in his faith.