I was going to write something here about César Franck. I watched Nelson Freire perform the other day (he is rocking solid on his Isaac Albeniz, I wish we'd see more pianists tackling the Evocación from Iberia, technically sonofabitchy though as it is) and found myself kinda disconcerted by his rendition of the Prélude, Choral et Fugue (PC&F). I was going to complain we never hear any Franck other than the PC&F, but the only non-PC&F Franck I own is an old 2-CD compilation by Philips, which I hadn't ripped to the PC yet and hadn't listened to in years, something I'm fixing now. As for concerts, even when it's french-embassy-sponsored¹ you don't get much of that repertoire, programs often favouring some mind-crushingly boring Francis Poulenc instead.

I digress. Nelson Freire decided for clarity, more tempo giusto than the usual dramatic delays, and a more constrained attitude re: tempo and dynamic variations. Used to people performing this piece as if it were some Lisztian apocrypha, I have been having some hard time making up my mind about it. Some stuff clearly didn't do it for me; the arpeggios in The Choral were played slowly, clearly and un-pedalled enough to remind one of Johann Sebastian Bach preludes - whom the piece is an hommage to anyway - but lost the lush, sensuous quality that contrasted with the severe chords of the opposing motif (my imagination always interpreted this contrast as taking solace, as the heavy chords give way to yet another reiteration of the arpeggios).

But the issue is trickier. There is very little tradition surrounding Franck, as France hadn't spawned any 1st-rate composers for quite a while, and Franck doesn't seem to have cared much about Charles Gounod. Liszt and Wagner were the composers that influenced him most, and also the mostly Baroque organ repertoire (while Liszt was interested in the organ, Franck was primarily an organist, who only got seriously into composition in his final years), but I don't feel right taking these influences and pinpointing him as a Liszt-like Late Romantic. Should he be played as a German expat? Should his organ-music roots be taken more into consideration? Given this is an organist's hommage to Bach, but one that is clearly influenced by Liszt in its tensions and form - where between Liszt and Bach do you compromise?²

¹ You pretty much need an insider source to learn of concerts by the French embassy, they work hard not to let you know.

² I guess pretty much where you compromise in Liszt's fugues etc. But where do you compromise there? (or rather, where should you compromise, as this is usually dictated by the performer's manual ability.)