It’s not often you hear César Franck’s monumental oratorio Les Béatitudes. Let’s just say that posterity tends to find this devotional tribute to the Gospels a little heavy-handed and pompous. Even the reviews of this outing in the Guardian and a Quebec rival I won’t name mention these same ‘faults’. And yet Debussy had this to say about it: “It’s still music and, what’s more, it’s still the same beautiful music…”.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m generally charmed by this Germanic adventure by the most German of French Romantic composers (born in Belgium).
Yes, it’s true, there is no particular dramatic development. Just musical settings of the Sermon on the Mount as recounted by Matthew. But why should there be a script? Why ‘’operatise’’ something that doesn’t really lend itself to it? And even if it could, why not just set the text to music? In short, the lack of dramatic power argument seems to me to run out of steam pretty quickly.
Another argument: it’s pompous. Well, yes, it is. But Brahms’s German Requiem is not lacking in pomposity either, or Mahler’s 8th pushes it into the stratosphere, without these two works being as shunned as Franck’s. And what’s more, next to these two giants, Franck doesn’t look like a amateur either!
In short, I’m not going to deny myself the pleasure of wallowing in this thick, fluffy velvety draping, with its alternately powerfully emotional and tenderly delicate choral passages (especially the first). Franck’s orchestration is as luxuriant as one could wish, with strings and noble bursts of brass. The woodwinds occasionally brighten up this copious work. If you like to be caught up in serious grandiosity, you’ll love this fine reading by the Belgian orchestra, accompanied by the Hungarian National Choir (aren’t there any choirs in Belgium?) and soloists who are entirely worthy of the composer’s demands for heroic projection. Madaras’s direction emphasizes the contrasts between epic tutti and moments of contemplative introspection.
Soloists :
Anne-Catherine Gillet, soprano
Héloïse Mas, mezzo-soprano
Ève-Maud Hubeaux, contralto
John Irvin, tenor
Artavazd Sargsyan, tenor
David Bižić, baritone
Patrick Bolleire, bass
Yorck Felix Speer, bass
