Orgue

Known as the ‘First Lady of the organ’, Marie-Claire Alain was a strikingly mature, creative and intuitive artist. Spanning four centuries of music, from Baroque masterpieces by the likes of Couperin and Grigny, through cornerstones of the French organ repertoire by Widor, Vierne and Messiaen, to two discs of works by her brother Jehan, this collection is testament to her vast and impressively wide-ranging recording legacy.

An extraordinary enterprise … As an experience of the sounds and styles of French organ culture this boxed set, it seems to me, is indispensable … the body of music is mostly, here, not created but simply made alive by the apt choice of instruments … it is a resource to which to return with delight.

Ton Koopman, great Dutch organist and harpsichordist sublimating the baroque scene for five decades, here delivers us an overview of the Great Organ (Robert Cliquot/ Julien Tribuot, 1710) of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, inaugurating our collection "L'Вge d'Or de l'Orgue Franзais" (the Golden Age of French Organ). An anthology of the possibilities of this purely "French style" instrument, here are the two great Suites of Clйrambaut, published the same year as the inauguration of the instrument, majestic pieces of Louis and Franзois Couperin, masters of colors, of Daquin's Christmas Music full of sap, and even a Bach Choral! A Master Organist makes a resounding tribute to the symbolic instrument wanted for his Chapel by Louis XIV.

Liszt's position as a composer for the Church has always been controversial. The paradox that the most modern composer of the age, the supporter of the revolutionary ideals of 1789, 1830 and 1848, ended up writing music for an institution regarded as a bastion of everything conservative and reactionary, has led to a questioning of Liszt's motives. With the rapidly advancing secularization of culture, Liszt was seen as disillusioned, and his decision to take minor orders in 1865 was considered a startling about-turn for one so worldly. In fact, Liszt wrote sacred music with reform in mind. The dismal state of church music in the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was common to hear opera cabalettas sung to liturgical words, encouraged him to go back to plainsong and the music of Palestrina for inspiration. Composed in 1865, the year he took minor orders, the Missa Choralis embodies these twin elements. The influence of plainsong pervades the thematic material, albeit refocused through Liszt's boldly original and expressively chromatic harmonic language.