César Franck; Charles-Marie Widor - Works for Organ & Orchestra (Christian Schmitt; Fabien Gabel)

Information

Composer: César Franck; Charles-Marie Widor

• Franck - Grande pièce symphonique, Op. 17, FWV 29 (arr. Zsigmond Szathmáry)
• Franck - Les Éolides, Op. 26, FWV 43
• Widor - La nuit de Walpurgis, Op. 60

Christian Schmitt, organ

Bamberg Symphony Orchestra

Fabien Gabel, conductor

Date: 2025

Label: CPO

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Review

Originally for organ solo, César Franck’s Grande Pièce Symphonique, Op.17 is the second and largest piece from his Six Pièces pour Grand Orgue and very much characteristic of his mature style in its cyclic form and symphonic scale. The version with orchestra recorded here is the brainchild of organist Christian Schmitt, who asked Hungarian musician Zsigmond Szathmáry to create a concert-hall friendly piece intended to raise awareness of this great music.

Szathmáry sees this as a “pathbreaking work” that paved the way for later organ symphonies by the likes of Widor and Vierne, and as such he has treated the orchestration with great respect and idiomatic empathy for the period and romantic colour of this piece. The organ and orchestra combination is warm and deep, without overly dramatic extremes but filled with imaginative touches. When I first put this on the CD player I had to remind myself that this was originally for organ solo, such is the natural and authentic nature of its sonorities. The organ has a prominent part, but the musical material is divided fairly equally between soloist and orchestra so that this has more of the effect of a ‘symphonic piece with organ’ rather than an organ concerto.

Franck’s Les Éolides is a symphonic poem based on texts by Leconte de Lisle that describe how the daughters of Aeolus, god of the winds, bring nature to life with gentle breezes. The programmatic nature of this music gives it a balletic feel, and its dancing impulse is infused with a lightness of touch in the orchestration in keeping with its airy subject.

Charles-Marie Widor is best known for his organ symphonies, developed to make the most of the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll instruments of his day, and in particular the hundred-stops instrument built in the Église Saint-Sulpice in Paris where Widor would be organist from 1870 to 1933. As a result of Widor’s music for the inauguration of the Cavaillé-Coll organ in Saint-François-Xavier in 1879, he was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society for a symphonic poem to be based on Goethe’s Faust. La Nuit de Walpurgis had however to compete with the likes of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and other contemporary Goethe inspired works so it only had modest success in its day, but it comes across here as very entertaining and certainly of a different character to Widor’s organ symphonies. The first of three movements is powerfully energetic, the second an atmospheric nocturne with muted strings, the finale a mighty bacchanal that blends playfulness and bombast in equal measure.

This has turned out to be much more of a fun disc that I expected. Not even the most ardent organ afficionado should be offended by Zsigmond Szathmáry’s glorious version of Franck’s  Grande Pièce Symphonique and this is very much the star of the show here, but the Bamburg Symphony Orchestra plays everything very well and recorded balances are very good in an entirely appropriate concert-hall perspective.

— Dominy Clements

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César Franck (10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life. As an organist he was particularly noted for his skill in improvisation. Franck is considered by many the greatest composer of organ music after Bach. Franck exerted a significant influence on music. He helped to renew and reinvigorate chamber music and developed the use of cyclic form. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872, his pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Guillaume Lekeu and Henri Duparc.

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Charles-Marie Widor (21 February 1844 – 12 March 1937) was a French organist, composer and teacher of the late Romantic era. Widor was a prolific composer, writing music for organ, piano, voice and ensembles. Apart from his ten organ symphonies, he also wrote three symphonies for orchestra and organ, several songs for piano and voice, four operas and a ballet. As of 2022, he is the longest-serving organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, a role he held for 63 years. He also was organ professor at the Paris Conservatory from 1890 to 1896, and then he became professor of composition at the same institution.

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Christian Schmitt (born 1976 in Erbringen, Saarland) is a German organist. He studied organ with Daniel Roth, Leo Krämer and James David Christie. Since 2014 he has been Principal Organist of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, for which he curates the organ series for the Bamberg Concert Hall. Schmitt has played the organs of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Musikverein, the Gewandhaus Leipzig and the Maison Symphonique Montréal. His discography currently includes around 40 recordings. He is also an expert consultant for organ renovations and construction.

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Fabien Gabel (born 10 September 1975) is a French conductor. Born in Paris, he trained as a trumpeter at the Paris Conservatory and later studied in Karlsruhe. His conducting career gained momentum after winning the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, leading to his role as Assistant Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Gabel has served as Music Director of the Orchestre symphonique de Québec and currently leads the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich. He has conducted many of the world's foremost orchestras and soloists and was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2020.

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