Symphony in D minor, FWV 48

Franck completed his only mature symphony in August 1888 after two years' work, at sixty-five, having spent most of his career as an organist and teacher rather than a symphonist. The first performance at the Paris Conservatoire on 17 February 1889 was received coldly — the faculty objected among other things to the cor anglais in the middle movement, an instrument they held to have no place in a symphony. Franck died the following year without seeing the work established. Its three movements are generated from a single motto figure, and the middle one combines the traditional slow movement and scherzo. The score was finished on 22 August 1888, Jules Garcin conducted the first performance, and Franck dedicated the symphony to his pupil Henri Duparc.