François-Xavier Roth, not this time with his ‘period’ ensemble Les Siècles but with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, conducts a performance of César Franck’s Le chasseur maudit that has dramatic thrust, demonic intensity and clearly defined textural detail as well. There is a very real sense, in listening to this performance, that Roth and his orchestra have the dark narrative in their very blood, so that its frenzy, its tensions and the cursed hunter’s wild chase towards death come vividly before the mind’s eye.

Liège prides itself on being Franck’s birthplace and, although he defected to Paris and there gathered round him his famous ‘bande’ of creative acolytes, the Liège orchestra might well feel that it has a special duty to pull out all the stops in playing the city’s illustrious son’s music. It certainly sounds as though the musicians, under Roth’s direction, have a firm grasp of the idiom here, not merely in Le chasseur maudit but also in Les Djinns, to which Cédric Tiberghien brings an added degree of dynamism as the piano soloist. The airier, more lyrical qualities of Les Eolides are observed with equal perception, the chattery woodwind figures that pre-echo the Saint-Saëns of the Organ Symphony done with a piquant delicacy that provides a contrast to the urgency and ecstasy elsewhere. Tiberghien is also soloist in the Variations symphoniques, a performance that highlights the discretion, the strength and the subtleties of expression that distinguish his pianism and find sympathetic counterparts in the orchestral playing.