César Franck, Variations symphonique pour piano et orchestre (Symphonic Variations)

Variations symphonique pour piano et orchestre by César Franck. Fabio Banegas, piano. Francisco Varela, conductor. Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine. Recorded in November 2021. Part of album released by Guild Music, a classical music label from the United Kingdom, recorded in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of César Franck's birth. Composed in Paris in 1885, Franck's Symphonic Variations was finished on December 12, 1885 (two days and sixty-eight years after his birth) and it was dedicated to pianist Louis Diérmer. Described as “a superb blending of piano and orchestra” in a program of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and a “flawless work and as near perfection as a human composer can hope to get in a work of this nature” (Fleur De-Lis newsletter season XI, Vol. 3, 2004), Symphonic Variations is a piano concerto in one movement where Franck masterly used the cyclical form while making reference to the cramignon folkdance from his native Belgian. A crucial work in the development of French academic music and in the evolution of the piano concertos, Symphonic Variations is a groundbreaking concertante piece in which the soloist is no longer in contest with the orchestra, but rather a work where Franck placed both in equal terms. César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert Franck was a post romantic composer, organist and pianist. He was born on December 10 1822 in Liege, Belgian. He lived most of his life in Paris becoming a naturalized French citizen in 1873. César Franck died on November 8, 1890 in Paris, his oeuvre includes 91 compositions and as a teacher he influenced the subsequent generation of French composers.