A disciplined and dapper account of the Franck Symphony recorded before a well-behaved audience, with well-behaved brass, faster than average basic tempos moderately and skilfully varied, in well-balanced, reasonably spacious sound. However, in the company of available recordings from such past masters as Toscanini, Monteux and Martinon, Ozawa's Franck is rarely borne aloft on wings of song, or in the case of the first movement, founded in the rock of a decently grand Lento. And it seems to me that the moments at which Ozawa most seeks to 'control' his brass—the beginning of the outer movements' allegros—are moments where 'movement' most needs to be launched (or re-launched) with a forceful, motivating statement. Among modern recordings, Dutoit's (coupled with d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnard francais) has a wider expressive compass.
In the Poulenc, DG's 1991 engineering brings Boston Symphony Hall's organ closer than RCA's 1960 balance for Munch, resulting in greater clarity for such things as the organ's fast-moving top line in the Allegro molto agitato (start of track 6) just past the half-way mark, though Munch's organist, Berj Zamkochian, doesn't have the stamina for this section. Simon Preston, unfazed by Ozawa's challenging tempo (no faster than Poulenc's metronome mark), sustains the pace and the clean fingerwork, and even manages to romp ahead manically at the tres allant (1'40'' further on). This section, too, points up the relative lack of strength in the Philharmonia's string section in Dutoit's recent recording with Peter Hurford. If I incline towards the latter, it is because of Hurford's imaginative daring (the startling subito piano echo of the second of the two octave drops that precede the above-mentioned Molto agitato passage), his apparent eccentricity (the often very demarcated phrasing), his more brilliant instrument's range of tones (and wind!), and the extra light and shade that Dutoit admits to the piece (and the coupling: fine performances of the Poulenc piano concertos). The excellent timpani of Boston's Everett Firth, common to both the Munch and the Ozawa recordings of the Organ Concerto, are a more boomy presence on DG.'