LDV113-4

30 FRANCK How would you define his aesthetic in comparison with that of Franz Liszt? Liszt seems to me to be less of an ‘architect’ at heart. I’d say, rather, that his organ works display a limitless imagination in the art of variation, which is also admirable in its own way. Liszt is perhaps more modern; he opens up the sound space to the future. Franck, on the other hand, is more inward, yet at the same time he is the brilliant representative of a lofty nineteenth-century aesthetic that goes back to Beethoven. Then again, just look at those two personalities. Franck never really left Paris. Liszt travelled all over the world, fascinating huge audiences with his charisma and virtuosity. Franck’s father dreamt of a similar destiny for his son. By ‘killing his father’, Franck effectively took refuge in composition, as an inner life, and seems no longer to have had any need of success with the mass audience.