César Franck
Complete Chamber Music
Leon Blekh, Augustin Dumay, Anna Agafia, Lorenzo Gatto, Shuichi Okada, Miguel da Silva, Ari Evan, Gary Hoffman, Stéphanie Huang, Frank Braley, Alexandre Chenorkian, Jonathan Fournel, Salih Can Gevrek, Julien Libeer, Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden, Philippe Cormann, Quartetto Adorno, Trio Ernest, Karski Quartet
To mark the 200th anniversary of César Franck, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, its recording partner Outhere (the Fuga Libera label in particular) and the Palazzetto Bru Zane present a new boxed set of Franck’s complete chamber works. The individuality of this recording lies in the mentoring and joint performance that is the hallmark of the Music Chapel, with several of its masters in residence (Augustin Dumay, Gary Hoffman, Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden) or guest masters (Frank Braley), associate artists Lorenzo Gatto, Julien Libeer, Jonathan Fournel and the Adorno Quartet, as well as many promising young artists in residence.
To record Franck’s complete chamber works today is to spotlight Franck’s genius once again through the masterpieces that have achieved worldwide fame: the great Piano Quintet (1878) and the Sonata for violin and piano (or cello and piano) (1886). The listener will also discover Franck’s early chamber works, which were composed during the 1840s; his other chamber works were composed much later in life, during the 1880s.
The quality of the performers, both young and more experienced, the work done in pre¬paration for these recordings and the care taken with the recordings themselves make this complete collection unique in Franck’s discography.