Michel Plasson - César Franck: Rédemption (1994)

The liner note with this issue is very thoughtful and intelligent, so I suppose the writer was inevitably going to do his best to address and answer the question of what category of composition best includes Franck’s Redemption. He is at least categorically clear on one point – this is no oratorio. Nor is it any surprise when he suggests that the work may be one of a kind. After all, this is the end of the 19th century not the 18th. Individuality was the name of the game by now, so it might actually have been a bit of a shock to find that a major work by such an innovative composer fitted neatly into some pre-existing classification.

Even the title ‘Poeme Symphonie’ does not help greatly, because the term at that stage was applied mainly to orchestral works by Liszt. This time we have a major choral work with solos, spoken as well as sung. The title ‘symphony’ had also been enlarged and adapted, notably in being used in Berlioz’s Faust, and if we really think it important to find a category to place Redemption in we might help ourselves to a special category of these two works. Such a category had a long and varied posterity ahead of it, notably embracing Mahler’s 8th symphony along with Delius’s Mass of Life to name only two striking examples.

The term ‘symphonic’ might be held to apply to the scale rather than to the style of the two main orchestral episodes. The Morceau Symphonique, in particular, that acts as the prelude to the second part, is nearly a quarter of an hour long, which is a long as the first movement of a Brahms symphony. Where it differs from symphonies by Brahms is that it does not really feature thematic development in the great Beethoven tradition, but is more of an extended orchestral lyric. That just leaves the not-so-minor issue of the text and its significance. This takes us back to Faust again in being concerned with the fate of the human soul.

Franck’s theme, the poem being the work of Edouard Blau, is the great standard Catholic doctrine of mankind labouring under the burden of Original Sin until Redemption is brought by Christ to those who will recognise and accept the Gift brought to them. There is a chorus of Human Sinners and also a Chorus of Angels. There is a soprano Archangel who sings two long and melodious arias, lengthy indeed, but not on a different scale from Ihr Habt nun Traurigkeit in the Brahms Requiem. The ‘symphonic’ designation may have been intended for these solos, and they may seem symphonic to us too when we are in that sort of mood.

There is also a spoken narrator, the text beautifully enunciated by Lambert Wilson. The Archangel is sung, well but without being a performance I would quite call outstanding for beauty of tone at its first outing, by Beatrice Uria-Monzon. The choruses are very well done, and I liked the lively fleet-footed style and diction of the human chorus. The overall direction and orchestral playing strike me as admirable, even though I have no comparison available. Indeed I am hearing the work for the very first time.

It does not appear to be any kind of chart-topper, and I suppose it just does not have that sort of profile. The liner makes the excellent point that Franck’s outlook on this kind of Catholic doctrine is not unlike the sort of attitude that he might have shown towards mythology of a suitably solemn and impressive type. Certainly this is not the simple devout mind of Bruckner nor the specially mystical Catholicism of Messiaen. Whatever we call it all and however we classify it, it is an exceptional new find for many, myself obviously included. And beautifully recorded too.