Edinger Quartett, Leo Klepper, Mathias Donder - E. Franck: String Sextets op. 41 & op. 50 (2004)

In Audite's survey of the music of Eduard Franck, this has long been one of my favourite discs. The string sextet can be a tricky genre to master, which perhaps partly accounts for its rarity compared to the string quartet and even the piano quartet during the Romantic era: there are six musical parts that have to retain a degree of independence, as opposed to four in the quartet form, of course; and there is also the problem of balance, with the two violins effectively set against four instruments in lower registers.
Happily, these two works draw upon Eduard Franck's strengths - an affinity for the string instruments generally and a mastery of counterpoint. All too often in the Romantic period, perhaps as a result of the rise of formal training in conservative musical conservatories, fugal elements are dutifully and sometimes incongruously inserted in development sections to pad them out, often displaying little feeling for the rest of the music surrounding it. Eduard Franck's chamber music, however, reveals a master of counterpoint who uses polyphony as a natural and integral function, and it serves the music without feeling forced. At around 40 minutes each, these are undoubtedly large scale chamber works but there are no longeurs and the music flows quite organically. Of the two, the later work is perhaps the most concisely structured but the profusion of ideas - always, I should add, held in perfect balance - in the E flat sextet's expansive, opening `Allegro' is a delight in itself and Franck mixes rustic hints here and there with a kind of post-Schubertian, bitter-sweet lyricism that is quite magical; the latter quality is just as pronounced in the ensuing `Andante' too, a movement that attains a level of rapt beauty in expression at times.
As with all these enterprising releases of Franck's chamber music from Audite, the sound quality is a model of its kind, all the inner parts captured with beautiful clarity and the general soundscape warm and natural sounding. Here the Edinger Quartet is expanded, of course, with two additonal instrumentalists but they bring to the music the kind of emotional generosity and evidently deep-felt advocacy that these works merit and which has marked all their previous Franck releases.
Highly recommended.