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Recorded live in 1969 at a Noonday Recital in St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University. Great thanks to WKCR Radio for preserving these tapes, for help with them, and for granting permission to post them.
This recital presents the Trois Chorals of Cesar Franck, No. 1 in E Major, No. 2 in B Minor, and No. 3 in A Minor. Searle liked to program them this way, one right after the other, starting at 12:10 PM, and ending in time for afternoon classes.
Searle's approach is architectural, un-self-indulgent, unpatronizing. In his hands the Chorals seem to be both romantic symphonic poems and classical variations.
He projects everything in the piece with complete clarity, but he does not allow the juicy bits to dominate his presentation or to to obscure the interrelationships within the pieces. In this way, the architecture itself becomes highly expressive.
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