Bru Zane’s first contribution to this year’s Franck bicentenary is this fine survey of his songs, a form with which, it would seem, he was not always entirely at ease. He composed them sporadically throughout his career, and published a small collection in 1862, though some did not appear in print until after his death, and one, ‘Pour les victimes’, written for a fundraiser for victims of the Opéra-Comique fire in 1887, was only rediscovered shortly before this recording was made. The only group specifically intended as a set was the Six Duos of 1888, very much aimed at domestic amateur performance.

Overall, they are unquestionably uneven. Certain characteristics dictate weaknesses as well as strengths: dominant vocal lines hovering between melody and declamation; chordal or arpeggiated accompaniments, some effective, some unvarying; an intermittent fondness for lengthy strophic forms that run the risk of becoming repetitive. The harmonic language can be strikingly original, though: the shimmering arpeggios of ‘L’ange et l’enfant’, for instance, sound almost Impressionist: it comes as a jolt to discover that it dates from as early as 1846.

Franck has been castigated for being indiscriminate in his choice of texts, though he composed fine settings of Victor Hugo (‘À cette terre où l’on ploie sa tente’ and two versions of ‘S’il est un charmant gazon’), Sully Prudhomme (‘Le vase brisé’) and Alfred de Musset (‘Ninon’). He could also, on occasion, turn an indifferent poem to gold, as in ‘Le mariage des roses’, though there are also occasions when sentimentality or religiosity can get in the way, most notably perhaps in the Six Duos. There are a handful of political songs. The overlong ‘Les trois exilés’ questionably hails the return of the Napoleonic spirit to France on the foundation of the Second Empire in 1848, while ‘Paris’ and ‘Patria’ (another Hugo setting) are meditations, by turns grieving and defiant, on France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

Tassis Christoyannis and Jeff Cohen, meanwhile, have become Bru Zane’s interpreters of choice for their forays into the song repertory and their interpretations have the same finesse and expressive detail that we find in their surveys of Hahn (3/20) and La Tombelle (7/17). If anything, Christoyannis’s upper registers sound easier here than on the Hahn set, and his dynamic shading is immaculate, from the beautiful yet sinister mezza voce he deploys in ‘L’ange et l’enfant’ to suggest the insidious way the angel draws the dying child into the afterlife, to the roaring fury of the climax of ‘Paris’. That ‘Les trois exilés’ seems interminable is Franck’s responsibility, not his.

Cohen matches his approach throughout, as careful dynamic gradations breathe life into Franck’s sometimes repetitive piano figurations to underscore verbal shifts and emotional subtleties. Véronique Gens joins them for the Duos, finely done despite the cloying sentiments, and is also given what the booklet calls ‘a cameo’ in the form of the first version of ‘S’il est un charmant gazon’, sung with admirable poise. The recording uses a critical edition by Jean-Philippe Navarre, who also supplies the extensive notes. They don’t always make an ideal listening guide, however, as he discusses the songs chronologically, while the recording is very differently structured, with the Duos and shorter songs on the first disc, their longer counterparts on the second. The best of it is fascinating, though, and it’s all beautifully done.