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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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In Mad Sweeney’s shadow: mass, piano trio, lieder cycle, wind quintet – for each of these "classic" formats Corcoran has created his own original, archaic sound.  |
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| Works by Sándor Veress, Eric Gaudibert, Jean Luc Darbellay and Rudolf Kelterborn!; conducted by Erich Hörbarth. |
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| The master of nasal sounds: Matthias Arter has freed the oboe from the clutches of ordinary classical music and catapulted it into the 21st century. |
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