Franckaphilia

That was the title of a faculty recital I attended on a recent evening.

César Franck

Fully, it was “Franckaphilia: The Complete Organ Works of César Franck – Part I: From Palace to Paradise,” performed by Janette Fishell, IU Jacobs School of Music Organ Department Chair. She performed in Auer Hall on the magnificent and relatively new (dedicated in 2010) Fisk organ, named the Maidee H. and Jackson A. Seward Organ. A Part II recital has been scheduled for January 2017.

Born in Liège, in what is now Belgium, César Franck (1822 – 1890) spent his adult life in Paris working as a pianist, organist, and composer. His work is typical of late Romantic musical compositions, but very enjoyable even if one isn’t predisposed to the Romantic period. This recital was composed of two sections. The first was “Trois pièces: No. 1 Fantaisie in A Major, No. 2 Cantabile, No. 3 Pièce héroïque,” followed, after a brief pause, by “Trois chorals: No. 1 in E Major, No. 2 in B Minor, No. 3 in A Minor.” Of all of repertoire, my favorite, and generally a crowd-pleaser, was the truly heroic, even bombastic, “Pièce héroïque.”

Fisk Organ in Auer Hall
IU Jacobs School of Music

I have been told that the Auer Hall organ is particularly well suited to Romantic music. I wouldn’t know. I have enjoyed a number of recitals and concerts there, including the evening previous to this concert, when a young Mexican harpist of our acquaintance played his senior recital there. It’s a wonderful, contemporary, mid-size (400-seat) concert hall—a fine facility in a very fine school of music.

Franck himself was associated with a fine organ. In 1858 he became the organist at Sainte-Clotilde, a basilica church on the Rue Las Cases in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris, and kept that position for the rest of his life. A year later the church acquired its famous Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ, played by Franck and a number of later well-known composers. Franck subsequently became a French national and in 1872 was appointed to a professorship at the Paris Conservatoire.

Who knows whether I’ll manage to take in Part II of Franckaphilia, but if it happens I’m sure it will be equally enjoyable.