Franck: Symphony in D minor, Chausson: Symphony in B flat major
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Jean-Luc Tingaud
Naxos 8.574536 71:08 mins
The pairing of the Franck and Chausson symphonies is a favourite standby and understandably so: at around 70 minutes they fill a CD and share a musical language.
Conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud understands that the Franck is essentially a work of contrasts, and offers us a wide range of both tempos and dynamics, so that tensions between the two extremes become a guide for the rhetoric. Franck’s long lines are intelligently and variously phrased, so there are no places where the argument flags. The only downside is that, from time to time, the first violins are swamped by the brass.
Tingaud’s performance of the Chausson is more arguable. He has studied the two autographs of the work in the Bibliothèque nationale – the original draft and the copy sent to the printer – but has drawn conclusions from them that must be doubted. For a start proofs, whether accepted or corrected, are missing, so we have no final, definitive text.
Tingaud is undoubtedly right in saying the 1897 published score is not perfect. But he’s wrong to say that Chausson writes ‘crotchet becomes quaver’ when he in fact writes ‘quaver becomes crotchet’, and in any case Tingaud obeys neither instruction, nor does he observe the presto at the end of the first movement, while I dispute that grave must be more ‘an indication of character than of tempo’. So what we have is a generally well-played version of this symphony, doing its best to disguise Chausson’s shortwindedness and persistent reliance on chromatic sevenths, which may or may not have the composer’s final imprimatur.