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Soprano Amy Pfrimmer and her collaborative partner on piano and later organ soloist on this disc Thomas Kientz offer a recital of lieder and organ works by Belgian/French composer César Franck (1822-1890) that is both satisfying and revelatory.

Souvenance is the title of this 2017 MSR Classics release and it shimmers with Pfrimmer’s exquisite narrative color palette, superb diction and text-driven phrasing, matched at every nuanced turn by Kientz’ intuitive pianism.

Assistant Professor of Voice at Tulane University in New Orleans, Pfrimmer also enjoys an active career in opera. Little wonder; her interpretation of these mostly brief and not often performed masterpieces of succinct melody and romantic temperament illuminate in subtle ways, Franck’s larger instrumental works.

The pace of these 13 delicious mélodies is always forward, but without sacrificing expressive intent or textual character. Both artists thread their individual narratives into one distinct and intimate emotional voice, at once superb and artfully contained, while also immediate and communicative to an audience.

Banality banished, Pfrimmer’s resonant and wide-ranging vocal timbre - sometimes bright, at other moments rich and dark depending on the needs of the texts - brings balanced, considerate and empathic intellectual heft to phrases like French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s “When the evening bells, in their slow flight bring down the hours at the bottom of the valley/If you have no friends or loved ones close to you, think of me!” from Les Cloches du soir (Evening Bells).

What a pleasure as well, considering Franck was one of the greatest organists of his time, to hear Thomas Kientz - titular organist at Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune Protestant Church in Strasbourg and co-titular organist of the choir organ at Strasbourg Cathedral - perform two works; a Pastorale from Six Pièces Opus 16-21 and the Fantaisie from Trois Pièces pour Grand Orgue on the superb instrument at L’abbaye de Royaumont near Paris.

Sound engineering by Jean François Cardonne at Royaumont and L’église St. Guillaume in Strasbourg where the songs were recorded, is a perfection of sonic ambiance, each space a resonant and pliant music box of hue and color captured with unblemished skill by Cardonne, an artist in his own right.

Souvenance is a repertoire gem; 13 superb examples of Franck’s wide-ranging but not often performed lieder and two excellent examples of the composer’s facility, compositionally and technically, from his large oeuvre of organ masterpieces.

Daniel Kepl | Performing Arts Review