THREE CENTURIES OF ORGAN MUSIC AT NOTRE DAME DE PARIS
Olivier Latry (Organ)
Naive V5338
Ah, the organ in all the five-manual French glory and splendour of the instrument of Notre Dame de Paris, its ancestry of builders going back to the 15th century, its sound ready to intoxicate and overwhelm the senses. The composers of Olivier Latry’s survey won’t all be familiar though the showmanship and fantastic colourings will – the unclichéd list runs through Séjean, Calvière, Daquin, Balbastre, Beauvarlet-Charpentier, Guilmant, Vierne, Leguay and Cochereau (a
Boléro
for organ and percussion) and on to a short improvisation by Latry himself. Never mind that a lot of the music is far from first-rate, this isn’t so much a disc to listen to as to bask in. The recording by Hugues Deschaux is very fine.
