Charles Marie Widor

On this disc, Jean Guillou teams up with Edo DeWaart and the San Francisco Symphony for a lush performance of Camille Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3, popularly known as the Organ Symphony. This is a lush performance of the Organ Symphony with spot-on tempi, great orchestral balance, and unsurpassed balance between organ and orchestra. This symphony has one long melodic line after another, and DeWaart keeps a long view that prevents any sense of meandering. The organ is stunningly recorded. Brass blaze with glory. Strings are lush. Timpani are extremely well-defined. The clarity of the recording provides an excellent window into finer details. It is difficult to imagine how anything could have been improved upon. The disc is filled out with a strong performance of Widor's Allegro from his Symphony No. 6. This account of the Organ Symphony has everything going for it. There are no obvious weaknesses. If you have excellent subwoofers, they will get the workout of their life. Very Highly Recommended!

Three great names of the organ: Widor, the founder of the french symphonic organ and his two most briliant works; Vandenheuvel, pathfinder of a new era of organ making as show his creations in St-Eustache (Paris) or Genève (Victoria Hall); and Kristiaan Seynhave, a multi-awarded young Flemish virtuoso who impulses extraodinary vitality in his playing. The whole gives a full hour of pure pleasure, with glamorous sound.

Widor was a very fine composer generally. Today he's recognized only for his organ music, but he also composed some first-rate orchestral music, with and without organ, that deserves to be better known. This set of the ten symphonies for organ solo is played with incomparable brilliance and recorded with spectacular impact.

Mats Lidström opens his notes for this exciting and varied new release with these emphatic words: “Let it be known that cellists’ repertoire is unlimited”! In that spirit this outstanding duo offer us a feast of fine fare from the neglected French repertoire. This includes the remainder of the Breton song arrangements by Koechlin which where unknown to the players when they recorded the first set and have here been recorded for the first time from the manuscript in the composer’s family’s collection. As for Widor, he has come down in history ………….