Widor

So often I focus on the technical aspects of music, the rhythm, harmony, and melody (if any!).  With recorded music it is even more complicated, especially with pipe organ recordings, because there are so many things that can go wrong.   Audio clipping, over-compression, unintentional rumble, lack of clarity, or on the other hand, sterile harshness.  Sometimes the issue is simply a less-than-ideal instrument or room.

Sometimes I forget that music is really about communication.  Sharing musical ideas, emotions, feelings and aesthetic beauty,  passed over centuries.  This happens most effectively when the performer is able to channel the composer's intent clearly.  It takes incredible skill to make the difficult seem easy.

Someone once said, all history is biography.  Everything that happens in human history is because someone similar to you or I made choices and affected the course of history. 

So it is with music.   The human beings behind the music make it come alive.  Our lives would be so much poorer without the rich mix of composers and musicians who have enriched and continue to enrich our lives with music.

So it was a bit of a chagrin that I realized I had not shared with you my friend and concert organist and composer Dr. Angela Kraft Cross, AAGO, who recently recorded Widor's Symphonies 4 - 7.   She is so passionate about French organ music that she has traveled to France over the past two decades primarily for organ lessons.  She was recently featured on PipeDreams - twice.

Her Widor album is recorded on the 1880 Cavaillé-Coll organ in St. François-de-Sales, Lyon France, installed by Widor's own father and inaugurated by Widor himself with the premiere of Widor's ever popular 5th Symphony.   You simply can't get more authentic!   Even St. Sulpice can't claim that.

The artistic director is Louis Robilliard, the organist titulaire at St. François-de-Sales for over 40 years and with whom Dr. Kraft Cross has studied for 20 years.

Lastly, I am happy to report that the recording quality is superb, the registration is perfect, no doubt in no small part from knowledge of this particular instrument that comes only from years of exploration.  In the quiet sections you can even hear the tracker action making it feel very personal.   In the towering finales the ensemble is glorious.  Everyone enjoys the famous Toccata.   But in fact my favorite parts still remain the tender quiet sections in the first two movements of Widor's 5th symphony.

The 2-CD set is now available on her website:  I know you will like it.