What a good conductor Jean Fournet is, and why do we hear him so seldom in Britain? The Chausson Symphony is an excellent touchstone for good conductors, actually: so much postWagnerian opulence that a really big sound is needed, and yet there are glinting details amid the rich textures that call for the most careful balancing; an earnest weightiness of argument that recalls Franck, and yet an urgency that demands sinew as well as mass. Fournet is very good at matters such as these: his textures are full but never congested, he can set a convincingly solemn tempo for the slow movement but he sustains its expressive continuity with unhurried momentum.
In this latter respect he is to be preferred to Jordan (Erato/WEA), who allows the slow movement's forward motion to slacken and whose orchestra is not in the same league as Fournet's. There was also until recently a very acceptable EMI recording by Michel Plasson to be taken into account, crisper in sound than either Jordan or Fournet, but not quite so satisfyingly ample as the latter. D'Avalos for ASV is less convincing than either Fournet or Plasson in his matching of tempo with articulation: swift but heavy-footed in the first movement, impassioned but hasty in the second.
As far as couplings are concerned D'Avalos offers a seriously flawed account of the Franck Symphony; Plasson a pair of symphonic poems by Chausson, Jordan just one of them (the Gotterdammerung-influenced Viviane). Since Fournier's Faure is charmingly played and his recording excellent (decently spacious, with the fullest climaxes easily accommodated), I should opt for his new version without much hesitation.'