Prélude, Choral & Fugue

If this landmark of French 19th-century piano music sounds like something from an organ loft—a fervently rhapsodic statement of the sort heard on a Sunday morning in some great Parisian basilica—it’s no surprise. Franck was for many years an organist whose compositions were for church performance. It was only later that his output turned more secular; even then, it often looked back to the world of religious observance—as does his Prélude, Choral et Fugue, which references the preludes and fugues written by Bach in his capacity as a servant of the church. Composed in 1884, when Franck was in his 60s, the piece comes in three sections as its title indicates, but they’re held together by interconnected themes that recur throughout in a cyclic manner—with the central Chorale (another Bach reference, to the chorales of the Passion settings) providing the emotional core. The Prelude has an improvisatory feel, ruminating above a walking bass that could easily be footwork on the pedals of an organ. The Chorale is loftily mysterious, with the technical challenge of arpeggiated chords that spread across four octaves of the keyboard. And the Fugue incorporates material from the previous movements into its own music, providing a grand finale to a score that amplifies the soundworld of the solo piano into visionary transcendence.