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| Franck turned to writing organ music only in his thirties, prompted not least by his appointment as organist at the Parisian Basilica Ste-Clotilde in 1858, a post he held until his death. He had played the organ at smaller churches in Paris before; the Six Pièces date back to that time and his first years at Ste-Clotilde; the core piece, Prélude, Fugue et Variation op. 18, with its extraordinary structure including a fugue as the central part, is dedicated to Camille Saint-Saens. Pastorale is dedicated to the famous organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1890); on the occasion of the inauguration of the Cavaillé-Coll Organ at the Palais du Trocadéro Franck wrote his Trois Pièces (1878) with their hymnic finale, the Pièce Héroique. True to his 1889 announcement that before his death he meant to compose three organ chorals 'like Johann Sebastian Bach but entirely different,' Franck actually completed his Trois Chorales within a very short time in September 1890. And they were, indeed, to be his last compositions: on 8 November 1890 Franck died of the injuries he suffered from a collision with a horse-drawn omnibus. Christoph Maria Moosmann's interpretation of Franck's complete organ works is both musically and technically no less than perfect. |
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From subtle irony to direct provocation: Satie, the complacent gentleman with a hat and goatee, meets the "pianist-futurist" Antheil.  |
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| Une Soirée Vian (1991): on the borderline between opera, oratorio and cabaret Denys Bouliane investigates the heritage of the French writer Boris Vian. |
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All you need is air
A songbird that stops singing must die. Georges Aperghis demands a similar degree of self-sacrifice of the performer of his 14 Récitations: |
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