An Album of Widor’s Complete Organ Works

courtesy of Naxos of America

While I have been waiting for Signum Classics to finish its project with pianist Malcolm Martineau to record the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré, the British label has released another “complete works” album. This is an eight-CD collection of organist Joseph Nolan playing all of the compositions of Charles-Marie Widor with a few “extras” on the final disc added for good measure. The collection, in its entirety offers about seven hours and 40 minutes of music.

Widor is one of those composers who is known almost entirely for a single movement from a longer composition. That composition is his Opus 42 (fifth) symphony in F minor; and the movement is the concluding Toccata. Ironically, all of my own listening experiences have been through recordings; but it has only been in the last few years that I have made it a point to build up my knowledge of organ music by attending more recitals.

Opus 42 is one of the ten symphonies that Widor composed for organ. The first eight are numbered, and they were followed by the Opus 70 “Symphonie Gothique” and the Opus 73 “Symphonie Romane.” Those eight symphonies account for six of the CDs in the Signum release. The seventh CD consists of the last two Widor compositions to be assigned opus numbers, Suite Latine (Opus 86) and the Opus 87 set of three “new” (Nouvelles) pieces. The final CD presents the six-movement suite Bach’s Memento, each of whose movements is a solo arrangement of familiar music by Johann Sebastian Bach. The CD also includes an organ transcription of incidental music that Widor composed for a production of Auguste Dorchain's four-act verse comedy Conte d'avril (April tale) and Marcel Dupré’s organ transcription of “Marche Americane,” one of twelve solo piano pieces collected in Widor’s Opus 31.

Readers may recall that, last month in Davies Symphony Hall, Paul Jacobs performed Louis Vierne’s Opus 59 (sixth) symphony in B minor on the San Francisco Symphony Ruffatti Concert Organ. Jacobs preceded his performance by discussing why this piece was called a symphony, rather than a sonata, the explanation being that the performance required deploying the diverse sonorities of the different ranks of pipes in what amounted to “orchestral” thinking. Curiously, Jacobs never mentioned that Vierne was Widor’s pupil, which suggests that Vierne appreciated his teacher’s symphonies and decided to follow up on them with his own efforts.

Certainly there is no shortage of “orchestral” thinking in these new recordings of Nolan’s performances. Nevertheless, as a result of my recent Vierne encounter, I feel it is worth mentioning that recording an organ performance based on such thinking is not the same as recording an orchestra. Most importantly, the pipes tend to be deployed in such a way that the range of amplitudes can be wider than those encountered in orchestra recordings. Thus, the soft passages can be so delicately subtle that one needs to turn up the volume, only to get blown away when the full power of many ranks of different pipes are all deployed. As a result, I have come to believe that physical presence is even more important where a full-bodied pipe organ is concerned than it is when one listens to a full orchestra bellowing out music from the late nineteenth century.

On the other hand my many years of experience have led to conjecturing that it is more difficult to come across regular opportunities to listen to the full breadth of the pipe organ in the United States than it is in European countries such as the Netherlands. That conjecture is based on experiences on the East Coast as well as the West. The only real exception I encountered came when I was growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia and always knew when I could listen to the Wanamaker Organ (now “hosted” by Macy’s). As a result, I would rather “ride the volume control” in the interest of learning more about repertoire than grumble about the paucity of performances that I can attend!

One final note: Those who are really serious about listening to organs are just as serious about detailed accounts of the different ranks of pipes offered by different organs. All of Nolan’s recordings were made in France involving organs in three different churches. The church visited most frequently is La Madeleine in Paris, where Widor began his career as assistant to Camille Saint-Saëns. All three of the organs were built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, and the accompanying booklet provides all the specifics regarding the ranks of pipes and the stops that control them.