If the celebrations of César Franck’s bicentenary in 2022 did not result in as much of a revival of interest in his music as his admirers might have hoped, they did lead to new recordings of neglected works. Last year Bru Zane released a fine version of the opera Hulda, for instance, and now comes this performance of Les Béatitudes, taken from concerts given in Liège during the anniversary year. The composition of this New Testament epic stretched over a decade, and though there was a private run-through of the score with piano in 1879, Franck never heard it performed as he intended – with eight soloists, double choir and large orchestra; the premiere eventually took place in Dijon in 1891, the year after his death.
Essentially the two-hour work is a series of meditations on Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as given in Matthew’s gospel, with the implications of those eight precepts explored in wordy texts by the French children’s author Joséphine-Blanche Colombe. There’s no narrative, and not much drama in Franck’s setting, though there are some gnarly climaxes and moments of typically dense chromaticism. But it’s hard going; though very decently sung and played, this performance under Gergely Madaras never suggests Les Béatitudes is a neglected masterpiece, more a work that deserves occasional revivals rather than a place in the repertory.
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