Franck: Symphony in D Minor, FWV 48

Album review

Produced on May 6, 1954 in the famous Studio 8H in the Rockefeller Center, New York, this is the only stereo recording by Guido Cantelli, a conductor who died in 1956 due to a plane crash in Paris at the age of 36. By that time his career had already taken off and Cantelli's interpretative genius rivalled that of Giulini and Karajan. Like his two colleagues, he had been spotted by Walter Legge, the producer of His Master's Voice, who enabled him to record these records that have gone down in legend. In this recording he conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra, placed at his disposal by Toscanini who saw in Cantelli his worthy successor. César Franck's Symphony in D minor has always been highly esteemed by conductors around the world. Its monumental side, derived from the symphonic organ and the combined influences of Brahms and Saint-Saëns, whose ”Organ” Symphony is truly contemporary, always produces a guaranteed effect from the moment the power of its irresistible initial crescendo bursts forth to its melodic Final. Cantelli gives a dramatic and boosted version of it without ever weighing down his massive orchestration. © François Hudry/Qobuz