Solo recordings from Gillian Weir are rare enough to warrant a certain degree of excitement whenever a new one appears. Certainly her previous collaboration with Collins Classics – the complete organ works of Messiaen (12/94) – attracted quite a flurry of praise from critics and enthusiasts. If this latest release fails to ignite such enthusiasm then much of that could be put down to the nature of Franck’s organ music. While Messiaen can instil high passion and deep devotion in the receptive listener, Franck is more reserved, more tight-lipped and more level in his emotional and spiritual outpourings. That Franck does have emotional and spiritual outpourings is beyond question; there is surely real passion at the outset of the Piece heroique (and for an object-lesson in effective control of the swell pedal surely Gillian Weir’s performance of this has no equal) while the Priere is surely as deeply felt an expression of faith as any of Messiaen’s more other-worldly offerings. But such outpourings are wrapped up in compositional craftsmanship firmly embedded in the traditions of the day.
Gillian Weir holds Franck in as high esteem as Messiaen, but for me she does not communicate the essence of Franck’s music with quite the same conviction or authority. When she does get her teeth into it we have performances of rare magnificence. The Priere I find deeply moving in a way I’ve never experienced before; the Final has an exuberance and joie de vivre besides which other players seem almost dreary. On the other hand the charming Prelude, fugue et variation has an almost routine quality while the third Chorale never really comes alive.
Both Marie-Claire Alain and Michael Murray fit the 12 self-styled ‘Masterworks’ of Cesar Franck on to two CDs. Gillian Weir takes up three, adding just the humble Andantino – Franck’s first published organ piece – neither a work nor a performance which, in its own right, really merits the purchase of a third CD. Moreover, both Alain and Murray are using classic Cavaille-Coll organs, French instruments not only contemporaneous with Franck but very similar to the instruments for which much of this music was written. Collins Classics have recorded their integrale Franck on the Frobenius organ of Aarhus Cathedral in Denmark. It has impressive Francophile credentials, not least in the reeds specially imported from France for the 1983 rebuild. But it is no Cavaille-Coll and the cathedral’s acoustic, nicely wrapped around this excellent recording as it is, is in no way akin to the dark, incense-laden atmosphere of either Caen or Toulouse. Murray is fastidious to the letter of the score and Telarc support him with a stunning recording. But, even if Gillian Weir’s performances don’t always set the soul on fire, she can be, and often is, thrilling and moving in a way Murray can never be. Alain has a consistency of conviction and a level of musicianly intensity which neither the others fully matches, although the Erato recording has none of the others’ spectacular vividness. It all boils down in the end, I suppose, to whether you think that the extra disc is a price worth paying; whether, to put it in a nutshell, you are prepared to pay a lot more for a little more.'