Debussy Franck: Piano Quintet & String Quartet – Takacs Quartet & Marc-André Hamelin

   in Piano International (Jul, 2016)
Few works have prompted greater speculation and prurience than Franck’s Piano Quintet. Even Liszt was shocked by its erotic intensity and daunting piano part that stepped outside the bounds of chamber music propriety. Saint-Saëns, the Quintet’s dedicatee and its first performer, walked off the stage leaving the score behind in a show of contempt, while Franck’s wife, sensing that music of such inflammatory passion was inspired by someone other than herself, made her detestation public.

The answer comes in the person of Augusta Holmes, a young Irish pupil described by Rimsky-Korsakov as ‘a very décolleté sort of person.’ Aged 56 Franck descended from his organ loft and, leaving behind his image …