Imagine writing the definitive works you will be remembered for in your mid-60s, decades after an aggressive parent tried and failed to manufacture you into a child superstar. That is the story of Cesar Franck. This episode follows how his father Nicolas-Joseph, a bank clerk with tunnel vision, pushed him from the Liege conservatory to performances for the king and into the Paris Conservatoire, alienating the city's critics with pushy marketing and hollow parlor pieces until the establishment shut the door on both of them.

When Franck fell in love with his student Felicite, his father tore up a dedication to her and forbade marriage, so in 1846 Franck walked out with only what he could carry. He married in 1848 by climbing over revolutionary barricades with help from the insurgents, then took a salaried church organist job that placed him a ...