Widor Early Symphonies

Charles-Marie Widor, Symphonies No. 3 and 4
Charles Krigbaum at the Newberry Memorial Organ, Woolsey Hall, Yale University
AKFA Records, SK-522, 1992

This is another issue in this series. I've little to add to my observations about the previous releases here except to confirm my previous impressions. This organ makes such convincing sounds that whatever it lacks in authenticity for this music it more than makes up for with its own very compelling voice. Overall, this instrument is much less reedy than the big Cavaillé-Colls--Aeolian Skinners in general, I think--though not less powerful. Rather, the power is made a different way, seemingly from just moving a whole lot of air through very large scale fluework rather than from a resort to brash reeds. That makes for a different effect, though I dare say it's no less effective.

This is always my impression of the more successful Skinners, that they exhibit a power and intensity all their own, some X-factor which newer "American Classic"-style concert organs (like the Dobson in Kimmel Center or the Meyerson Fisk) don't quite capture. I wonder what the comparative sound pressure levels between the instruments would be. It could be that I've got my teeth into a little subtlety that doesn't quite hold up to thorough rinsing, but every time I listen to this Woolsey Skinner I think "My god what a huge, huge sound."

The playing is excellent, as is the recording.

One Good Turn Deserves Another

Widor: Organ Favorites
Robert Delcamp at the Martin Pasi organ of the St. Cecilia Cathedral, Omaha
Naxos Records, 8.570310
Excerpts from Symphonies 1-6 and 9, etc.

***

I've long wondered what role authenticity really plays in musical enjoyment. I found myself very early on drawn to the sound of period instruments in baroque music, but not, I think, because these sounds were supposed to be "correct." No, I just liked the fundamental sounds better; I liked the clarity and intonation and / or lack of affected vibrato in music of my favored period. Even more contrarily, I always wondered whether more contemporary music wouldn't sound better on these older sounds (we do the converse of this all the time, by playing antique music on modern orchestral instruments, harpsichord music on piano, Buxtehude and Pachelbel and Scheidemann on modern organs). I knew that the music of Cesar Franck, say, played on the Flentrop organ at Harvard University--an organ whose sound I so loved and which was so effective in Bach--would go against custom and even the composer's stated desires; and yet I still felt the music would come off really well in that setting. Different, sure; but moving and wonderful and maybe better in some ways--small and focused and intimate.

Well, I never did get to hear Franck on that particular Flentrop (though E. Power Biggs recorded Hindemith to very good effect on it), but I've heard quite a bit of his music on very different instruments than Franck had in mind; and as with Bach's music Franck has a near-universal appeal that transcends period specifics.

This present release is another opportunity to put some of these questions front and center. The instrument, the Op. 14 of 2003 from the shops of Martin Pasi and Associates, resides in the St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha, NE, and is familiar to us from two recently-reviewed discs of baroque music performed by George Ritchie and Julia Brown (another issue from which Buxtehude cycle I have since acquired, recorded on the same instrument). We may recall from those reviews that the organ is really two organs in one, sporting a dual temperament. The whole organ of 55 stops on three manuals and pedal is available in well-tempering, and a smaller portion--29 stops on two manuals and pedal--is available in quarter-comma meantone. This is a really valuable tool for exploring the music of Bach and earlier, as those temperaments were a fact of life before the 19th Century, and music sounds different when tempered.

(Drawknobs for well-tempered; sliding levers for meantone.)

But the organs which Cesar Franck played were not tempered, at least not anything like what Buxtehude knew. So the idea of a non-equally-tempered organ being used for more contemporary music--music made familiar to us via equal tempering--seemed to push my old-sounds-with-new-music idea out nearer the uncharted waters. Once again it's our friends at Naxos who deliver the goods for us. The prevalent well-tempering of the organ (all 55 of the organ's stops are available this way) is subtle enough that it might be mistaken for equal temperament if you weren't paying close attention. None of the keys is woefully off color, and the Widor Symphonies spend much of their time in familiar tonalities. But these pieces meander through a much wider range of tonalities than was common in the Baroque, resulting in an occasional piquancy from the tuning and a glow to some of the resolutions that you don't hear with equal tempering. It's a little unexpected, but just as delightful here as with music where it's more commonly found.

And quite apart from the tuning, this instrument is clearly not from Cavaillé-Coll's workshop. It's a nicely powerful instrument with a solid 32' underpinning in a really wonderful, reverberant space, but it doesn't have a characteristic French sound; the reeds especially lack that brassy snarl that so characterizes C-C's organs. Just the same, I think it sounds fantastic in this literature, even if it might have sounded a bit odd to Franck's ears.

More distracting than the temperament to me is the organ's fairly flexible wind, which makes itself known in some of the big, chordy sections of the Symphony Finales. It's not extreme, and I don't mean to protest (though in fact I do think of it as a defect of antiquity that someone resurrected centuries later in an attempt to be "fashionable" and others followed suit), but it's an affectation that one simply isn't used to hearing in instruments after the Baroque. And a couple times I wonder if I didn't hear the instrument struggling to provide enough wind to meet the organist's demands. (In a couple recordings of Biggs' Flentrop, one could hear some parts of the organ flat slightly at the big climaxes, something which organ builder Fritz Noack told me a couple years ago was due to inadequate winding of the instrument's rückpositiv division--which malady he was hired to remedy. Well, this Pasi organ's temperament might be playing a role here: were the meantone stops added to the mix for big climaxes, for example?) Maybe my ears were just playing tricks on me. The effect, if there was one, was very subtle and nothing to prevent a thorough enjoyment of the performances.

Organist Robert Delcamp hails from Sewanee, Tennessee, where he is Professor of Music, University Organist and Choirmaster, and Chair of the Music Department at The University of the South. He has made several recordings for Naxos, mostly involving the music of Marcel Dupré. This marks Dr. Delcamp as a specialist in French repertoire and makes him a natural for Widor's music (Dupré was Widor's assistant at St. Sulpice in Paris for many years before taking over the position when Widor retired), and his performances are really excellent. He takes his time to let the organ speak into the great space, and he lingers over Widor's writing like someone who is trying to tell a story. I've never heard these pieces better, and rarely as good.

It's a GOArt World

French Symphonic Masterpieces
Hans Davidsson, organ
The 1998 Verschueren GOArt organ, Goteborg, Sweden
Loft Recordings LRCD 1054

• Guilmant: First Sonata (Symphony,) Op. 42
• Franck: Priere, Op. 20
• Widor: 2 movements from Symphony No. 6, Op. 42
• Alain: Intermezzo
• Duruflé: Suite, Op. 5

***

It is, apparently. My rapture with the recently-reviewed Volume 2 of Hans Davidsson's Buxtehude cycle recorded on GOArt's recent period recreation of a North German organ has led, naturally enough, to the acquisition of Volume 1 as well. I'll have two cents' about that shortly.

In the process of learning more about GOArt (the Goteborg Organ Art Center), I found that this North German organ was not the end of their surprises. Turns out that they are in the process of building a trio of period-faithful organs from distinct lineages. From these resources students learn hands-on about the mechanisms and sounds which played so large a part in the compositional schools in which we are still immersed today. I just can't overstate my fascination with this process, and with every detail of what has resulted from it.

The North German organ reviewed below is understandably their centerpiece, as the large and elaborate instrument was exhaustively researched and then designed and constructed in the school's own shops--an awesome accomplishment by every standard. But the North German organ was not the first instrument in the project. GOArt began with a similarly exhaustively-researched recreation of an instrument in the style of the French master, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Readers of these pages will recall that the Massachusetts firm of C. B. Fisk undertook quite a similar project at Oberlin College in Ohio in 2002; I've reviewed three... different... recordings... on this Fisk instrument, and have debated how close the firm came to hitting their mark. That another firm, this time with a university research staff in tow, would undertake the same project seems like lightning striking twice (in a good way). Then to find a recording of that instrument--one with Duruflé's Op. 5 Suite pour orgue particularly--was like a small lottery win for me.

This first GOArt organ was not built in the university's shops, but was entrusted to the Dutch firm Verschueren Orgelbouw BV from Heythuysen. After acknowledging that no existing firm was doing what Cavaillé-Coll used to do, an extensive search was undertaken and Verschueren emerged at the far end of that search. The chosen firm would obviously need to be one which was enthusiastically on board with building someone else's instrument, and with an extensive and diverse advisory board plus a university research team meddling in its operations, and the resulting collaboration bore fruit in 1998. As with the Fisk organ at Oberlin, the GOArt group researched every detail of Cavaillé-Coll's methods for constructing pipes and organ mechanisms, and the GOArt people then went to some pains to duplicate even the exact voicings of the various ranks by doing close A/B comparisons of their new pipes with the existing C-C pipework.

I think the Fisk organ at Oberlin College is a really fabulous and beautiful instrument, the outcome of a wonderful and exciting process; its a magnificent organ in its own right. But I don't really think of Cavaillé-Coll when I hear it. It's clearly French in general character, but it lacks some thing, some fingerprint that's found on all C-C's. I've speculated that the extreme lack of resonance in Finney Chapel put the Fisk people at a bit of a disadvantage, as none of C-C's famous instruments are found in such dead acoustics. I just can't help thinking that the profound intimacy of the acoustic has caused the Fisk people to voice the rough edges off the organ, edges which might have been beneficial--and certainly distinctive--in a larger acoustic. At the very least, the acoustic makes it difficult to assess how close the Fisk firm got to C-C's ideas. (The supplemental disc included with that first release addresses the question on everyone's mind: but what would it sound like in Notre Dame or St. Sulpice? But the inclusion of that disc, whereby the original recording is subjected to a computer alteration to place the organ in the acoustic of Chartres Cathedral, seems an admission of defeat. The oddity of Finney Chapel's sonic setting compared to any place we're used to hearing C-C's work is inescapable).

The space into which GOArt put their Verschueren organ was only a little more resonant than Finney Chapel, but GOArt specifically stipulated a minimum resonance they would accept and then took pains to accommodate that acoustic. This included researching what Cavaillé-Coll had to say about less resonant rooms. Turns out that C-C built quite a number of organs for private residences, which would naturally not have cathedral acoustics at their disposal, and the master had some distinct ideas about how to cope with this. Thus, GOArt's room was constructed specifically to order, including details like having the hardwood floor floating on sand, and having an insulating rubber layer between the inner and outer sections of the walls. The room is 59' X 35' X 35', so not large by cathedral standards. But it seems quite a sympathetic space for organ music, with enough resonance to help the organ blend.



Whatever the contribution of individual elements, all the research has paid off big: with this GOArt instrument, the Cavaillé-Coll illusion is very convincing indeed, quite thrillingly so. Though the instrument is relatively small--only 43 stops on three manuals, compared to 58 stops on the Oberlin Fisk--the stoplist and the voicing are spot-on. I would not be able to tell on sound alone whether this was a C-C or not (something I think I'd have little trouble doing with the Oberlin organ). GOArt's fidelity to C-Cs design is so comprehensive as to include a pneumatic-assist Barker Lever (on an instrument surely not large enough to require one, but the touch will be quite different from either electric or mechanical action) and to use mechanical combination pedals instead of the now-standard electronic pushbuttons. An electronic combination system was included, but only after the designers determined it could be added on without altering the period function or console aesthetic of the standard system in any way. Fanatical indeed. But the proof is in the pudding. I honestly can't think of what seminal thing an organ student would miss out on by playing this GOArt instrument over the actual Cavaillé-Coll. (True, they'd get Paris in the bargain, but only for a lesson or two.) The organ facade is configured in a shallow U shape, with the console in the middle and facing out into the hall, looking like a downsized version of the great organ at St. Sulpice without the statuary (and with simply-ornamented casework in sympathy with the concert hall's architecture).



As with the Buxtehude releases, Professor Hans Davidsson mans the Verschueren console for this release. Like his brilliant countryman Hans Fagius, Dr. Davidson demonstrates that he can play very convincingly in several styles and from very different periods. He brings the same deliberation to these works as to his Buxtehude, but he knows how to sound the organ to excellent effect, and he is well up for the dramatic moments. Cesar Franck's long-line Priere, which sounds almost like a 10 minute continuous melody, seems especially convincing. Likewise, in the denouement of the opening movement of Duruflé's Suite he lingers deliciously at the dissonant chords as the hands and feet move contrariwise, followed by three of the most beautiful minutes in all of music to close out the movement.

This is all a fantastic undertaking. Like the aircraft simulators I must work with in my job, I love that students at Goteborg are able to immerse themselves so effectively and completely in these worlds while never leaving the campus in Sweden. The pedagogical advantages seem palpable to me, though I think it's a really cool exercise even without the overt educational mandate. But even without a love of the process that brought us the instrument, this is a great recording of organ music. The recording itself is quiet and clean, and the performances are excellent. And the organ itself? It rocks.

One Last Oberlin Hurrah

French Mode: Jared Johnson on the Kay Africa Memorial organ,
Finney Chapel, Oberlin College.
Pro Organo CD 7153

• Widor: Symphony No. 5 in F Major, Op. 42, No. 1
• Dupre: Prelude and Fugue in f minor, Op. 7
• Alain: Danse Funebre pour Honorer une Memoire Heroique
• Hakim: Symphony in Three Movements

***

As promised, here are my two cents' worth about Jared Johnson's recording of more French music on the new Fisk organ at Oberlin college, one modeled after Cavaillé-Coll. Posts discussing the organ itself are to be found here and here.

Jared Johnson is a graduate of Oberlin College, and a student of Thomas Murray and Haskell Thomson. He is currently Assistant Organist and Choirmaster of Trinity Churcy on the Green in new Haven, Connecticut, and Director of Music of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.

This is a nice sampling of a good 80 years of Parisian organ history, moving chronologically from Widor's famous Fifth Symphony of 1887, to one of Marcel Dupré's Preludes and Fugues from 1914 (Dupré was Widor's successor at St. Sulpice), to a lesser-known piece from 1938 of Jean Alain, the very talented young Parisian composer who was killed early in the Second World War, and finishing with the Symphony en trois mouvements of 1984 by Naji Hakim, who is the present titular organist at Trinité in Paris, taking the post after the death in 1993 of Olivier Messiaen.

Especially after the recently-reviewed recording by Frank Speller of Cesar Franck on a Dutch-inspired instrument in Texas, it's most interesting to me to come back to this fascinating Fisk organ and to hear yet another organist's take on this earnest American replica of a French instrument. After the Visser-Rowland of Frank Speller's recording, this Fisk does indeed sound French in comparison, and certainly it sounds magnificent in this repertoire (which is not meant as any criticism of the Speller disc, which is wonderful and illuminating on its own). The very dry acoustic of Finney Chapel enables one to hear the details of this music with greater clarity than is typical, and the instrument has impressive power and range.

Jared Johnson is an accomplished, assured organist, and he does great justice to these pieces. The technical fireworks of Widor's famous Toccata from the Fifth Symphony (the second most famous and recognized piece for the organ after Bach's d minor Toccata and Fugue) are rendered with such clarity that it's almost like having a magic trick demonstrated and explained. The exact rollicking interplay between the hands and the feet in this movement have never been so clearly revealed. Dupré's quiet Prelude and measured Fugue from his Op. 7 take us half a century into the future from the Widor, and give the organ a chance to show off another group of colors from the previous piece. Both the Hakim Symphony and the Alain are new pieces for me. Johnson uses the organ's full range, and the pieces are registered with confident authenticity.

This makes three recordings for me on this instrument, covering Franck, Tournemire, and now this disc of four other eminent Frenchmen. And the more I hear of it the more it impresses me and convinces me that it was a really worthwhile experiment. However much I'm coming to love the sound of the instrument, I'm still not quite fooled into thinking it's the work of Cavaillé-Coll, and I'd love to figure out why not. (I'm writing this review in the absence of my CD collection--though I have the music with me on iTunes--so the answers may well be there in the liner notes.)

This instrument has it all: a fascinating pedigree, a really wonderful sonic character, and now a stable of fine recordings to show it off to a wider audience. And we're all beneficiaries.

Widor at Woolsey Hall

Charles-Marie Widor: Organ Symphonies
Charles Krigbaum, organ (1928, Ernest M. Skinner, Woolsey Hall, Yale University)
AFKA Records, SK-523, SK-524

• Symphony No. 5 in f minor
• Symphony Gothique in C Major
• Symphony 6 in g minor
• Symphony Romane in D Major

Here we have two of the four available volumes of a cycle of Widor organ symphonies recorded by Charles Krigbaum in the mid 80s in Yale University's Woolsey Hall. Krigbaum was University Organist for years and head of the Organ Department at Yale (a position now held by Thomas Murray), and is apparently now retired--there is virtually no information to be found about him on the web.

I first came across Krigbaum on a really splendid two-disc release on OHS called An Evening at Woolsey Hall, recorded on Woolsey's fantastic Skinner organ. The Widor Symphony on that release (well, the whole release actually) convinced me that I should give these other recordings a listen. It sounds as though Krigbaum originally recorded the whole Widor symphony cycle, but the AFKA releases currently encompass only Nos. 1-6, 9 and 10. There must be another disc with 7 and 8 on it, but it's not currently in the OHS catalog (and there seems to be no such entity as AFKA records).

Widor was organist at St. Sulpice in Paris from 1870-1934, and is mostly remembered today for these ten organ symphonies. Like many of the great French organ composers, these pieces were written for the sounds of Cavaillé-Coll's instruments, particularly his greatest and most famous instrument at St. Sulpice. Though perhaps without Vierne's spark of genius, Widor's symphonies are atmospheric and adept at making the organ speak into a cavernous space. Widor played an essential part in this great musical flowering which occurred in Paris from Cesar Franck onward. As professor of both organ and composition at the Paris Conservatoire, Widor was teacher to many who followed in his footsteps and became luminaries in their own right: Charles Tournemire, Marcel Dupré, Louis Vierne, Maurice Duruflé, Edgar Varése, Darius Milhaud, among many others. To my ear, these ten symphonies, written over almost 30 years, do not show any particular musical progression, though the last two (the "Gothique" and "Romane") are thought to be more introspective and to have an element of plainchant in their thematic material. Rather, they are beautiful and skillfully wrought, and they place some demands on the organist, and they show off an instrument's tonal palette.

Krigbaum understands these works, and he has the right instrument for the job. His tempos are rather stately, which is an aesthetic choice that resonates with me. The Toccata of Widor's Fifth Symphony is one of the most recognized organ works in the entire repertoire--right alongside Bach's BWV 565 d minor Toccata and Fugue--and it's a great means of demonstrating an instrument's (and performer's) mettle. Likewise the Finale to the Sixth: one can imagine Widor at the console, surrounded by admirers (whom he selectively and regally allowed up to the organ loft to witness his performance), thundering out these splendid sounds into the gigantic stone interior of St. Sulpice.

This organ is, to my ear, a real national treasure. The acoustic, while not quite St. Sulpice in scope, is really well suited to organ music, and the organ boasts an almost surreal tonal and dynamic range. The individual voices of this organ are often really compelling, and the tutti rather takes one's breath away. Skinner's pedal flues in particular sound like each one requires its own blower, so full and round is their sound. The big pedal reeds seem necessary only for the fullest textures, and everything at once threatens to boil the bone marrow of anyone within earshot. Martin Jean (another current Yale faculty member) has a cycle of Vierne Symphonies out on this instrument, and the more I hear of the organ the more impressed I am with it. I'll review that disc shortly.