Vierne: Complete Symphonies / Martin Jean

$53.99
Label
Loft
Release Date
August 28, 2012
Format
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VIERNE Organ Symphonies (complete): No. 1 in d, op. 14; No. 2 in e, op. 20; No. 3 in f?, op. 28; No. 4 in g, op. 32; No. 5 in a, op. 47; No. 6 in b, op. 59 • Martin Jean (org) • LOFT LRCD 1071/74 (4 CDs: 218:20)


Say “symphony,” and one thinks orchestra. Say “organ symphony,” and one thinks Saint-Saëns. The two words in combination don’t usually bring to mind a work for organ alone; yet for Louis Vierne (1870–1937) and quite a few others, a symphony for solo organ made perfect sense. Born 26 years earlier than Vierne but dying in the same year, the long-lived Charles-Marie Widor wrote 10 organ symphonies between 1872 and 1900, completing all but the last of them well before Vierne composed his first in 1899.


The idea of a symphony for solo organ may have been planted as early as 1863 by César Franck with his Grande pièce symphonique , but another man played a determinant role in this quintessentially French phenomenon, and his name was Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the most famous French organ builder of his time. He and the company he founded revolutionized the art and science of organ design and construction. They also established a new aesthetic for organ sound, which, for want of a better term, could be called the modern, grand theater organ.


Of crucial significance to the explosion of French organ works during this period was Cavaillé-Coll’s creation of whole new families of stops and of voicing and coupling mechanisms that allowed an organ to imitate virtually every instrument of the orchestra. This enabled composers to write for the organ as if it were a symphony orchestra. From Widor to Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Marcel Dupré, Jean Langlais, and a host of others barely known to us today—Augustin Barié, Émile Bourdon, Alexandre Cellier, André Fleury, and Léonce de Saint-Martin—organ symphonies poured forth.


While it can’t be said that Vierne’s organ symphonies have been neglected on record, they haven’t received as much attention as Widor’s. The blockbuster Toccata movement alone from Widor’s Fifth Organ Symphony has amassed nearly 100 recordings. Comparisons of the two composers’ works may not be fair, but they’ll be made anyway. Mark Swed, music critic for the Los Angeles Times , reviewing Christopher Houlihan’s live performance at Our Lady of Angels Cathedral in June 2012, described Vierne’s symphonies as “gloomily gothic,” but went on to say that Debussy thought highly of them and that Vierne influenced Messiaen.


It’s true that the music isn’t as outgoing or demonstrative as Widor’s—note that all six symphonies are in minor keys—and much of it is in a later, more modernistic style, but having come to terms with Vierne’s vernacular, the music has an increasingly cumulative power that is both moving and disturbing; Swed calls it “spooky.”


One thing that may be an issue if you’re considering purchase of this new set is that the long-in-the-catalog Jeremy Filsell set takes three CDs to Loft’s four. On its original Signum label—still available and selling for $55.49 at ArkivMusic—it was reviewed as part of an eight-disc set by Haig Mardirosian in 18:3. In its three-disc reduction, it’s still more expensive than this new Loft release, which is selling for $48.99. But here’s the catch: the Filsell set on Signum has been reissued by Brilliant Classics and is selling for $21.99. I can’t speak of Filsell’s performances, because I don’t have his set, but I do question why Loft had to take four discs, averaging just over 54 minutes each, to accomplish what Signum (and now Brilliant Classics) did in three. The set I do have is with organist Ben van Oosten on MDG, and it too is spread over two two-disc sets, so I can’t make too much of a fuss over this. What it finally comes down to for me are the organs.


Oosten performs the symphonies on three authentic Cavaillé-Coll instruments in Rouen, Lyon, and Toulouse. For the current set, Martin Jean has chosen the Newberry Memorial Organ in Woolsey Hall at Yale University, an instrument originally built in 1902 by the Hutchings-Votey Company, and subsequently updated in 1915 by Massachusetts builder J. W. Steere & Son, and again in 1928 by Boston builder Skinner. The term “mighty organ” never applied more fittingly than it does to this colossus of an instrument. Pictured in the booklet is the console with four keyboard manuals plus pedal and a surrounding array of buttons and knobs that would make a jumbo jet pilot jealous. The detailed specifications list 142 stops in eight divisions, totaling 12,617 pipes. Bach would wet himself.


The Cavaillé-Coll organs heard in Oosten’s recordings are no harmoniums, but they’d have the wind knocked out of them by Yale’s Newberry. The largest of them, the Rouen, also has four manuals plus pedal, but a mere 64 stops, fewer than half the Newberry’s. Next largest is the Toulouse Cavaillé-Coll with only three manuals plus pedal and 57 stops, followed by the Lyon organ with three manuals plus pedal and a measly 45 stops. The Lyon organ was apparently sufficient for the needs of Widor who inaugurated it in 1880. The Toulouse organ was inaugurated by Alexandre Guilmant in 1889; and in 1890, Widor was once again called upon to inaugurate the Rouen organ, one of the very last and considered by some the greatest of Cavaillé-Coll’s grand masterpieces.


If it’s beginning to sound like I favor Oosten’s versions of Vierne’s symphonies over Martin Jean’s, I’d have to say that’s only half true. Oosten’s MDG recordings suffer from the not uncommon “church” acoustic problem of long decay time and reverberation that tend to muddy the textures. In Vierne, this is not necessarily a bad thing, if you subscribe to Swed’s “spooky” description of the music, which in Oosten’s performances can suggest the soundtrack to a gothic horror. I say this is not necessarily a bad thing because it could be argued that the Impressionist blurring and pre-Messiaen klangfarbenmelodie are precisely what Vierne’s symphonies call for.


On the other hand, it you prefer to hear the music in a drier concert hall acoustic, Martin Jean’s superb performances, aided by Yale’s Woolsey Hall setting, cast these works in an entirely different light. Suddenly, voicing and contrapuntal lines are clarified, lifting from the music its eerie fog that must surely shroud something evil in its mists. Listening to Vierne in these two recordings is like listening to two different composers. Oosten’s version may be closer to what Vierne would have heard, since the Cavaillé-Coll organs were of his time and place, but I like both Oosten’s and Jean’s performances almost equally. I would have to give the edge, though, to the new Jean, both for the clarity of his playing and for the sharpness of Loft’s recording.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins


Product Description:

  • Release Date: August 28, 2012


  • UPC: 617145107121


  • Catalog Number: LRCD-1071-74


  • Label: Loft


  • Number of Discs: 4


  • Composer: Louis, Vierne


  • Performer: Martin Jean