Michael Murray At The Cathedral Of St. John The Divine: Works By Franck, Widor, DuprA©, Bach and Others

Excellent playing, recording and organ, but some bad repertoire...

By that headline, I'm asserting that this is a beautiful CD, excellently recorded, beautifully played with true sensitivity and artistry, with excellent registrations and good tempi for the extra-large space and reverberation this building offers! My sole objection here is that he could have opened up (much) more for the Franck Chorale #2 - it's NOT supposed to be restrained, especially just because it was meant to fit right after the Vierne and before the Dupré selections; otherwise, everything here is excellent! [One does NOT want to rush matters in such a building because things will just blur into one huge blob.] On those grounds alone I'd gladly give it a full 5 stars!

What I DON'T like about the CD is the repertoire selection! If this particular organ can handle any and all repertoire one can hurl at it (which indeed it can - by the way, kudos to TELARC for including the stop-list!), I'd have wished for more variety of repertoire. This CD is biased far too much towards 2nd-rate (and worse) French music!!!

[This is not to say that all French music is 2nd-rate or worse (far from it!); it's the specific items and composers (Widor, Dupré as well as - not on this disk - Guilmant, Boëllmann {excepting his "Prière à Notre-Dame"} and Gigout) that, sad to say and in spite of their best efforts, don't manage any better; even the best possible playing can't save them.]

I know this will hurt some people, but not to say it would be dishonest of me! The fact remains that Widor and Dupré were POOR composers!!!! Their music only survives in organists' circles because true 1st-rate stuff by 1st-rate composers like Brahms, Franck, Elgar et al is insufficient in quantity; simultaneously, transcriptions have for quite some time been looked down upon. Also, some people want to focus on Renaissance and Baroque repertoire which, while quaint and even beautiful, still does NOT have the emotional and wider appeal of post-1700 stuff!

Thus, I wish that the Widor excerpt was totally left out (boring as sin!!!! - only the Toccata from the 5th "Symphony" is half-decent...), and one of the Dupré works (in my opinion the "Cortège et Litanie"!) could also - and ought to - have been chucked. In their place, things like works of Messiaen, Reger and Howells (not to mention Elgar, Schumann or Brahms!) - all of better quality and worth both for the organ 'per se' and also as music - would have been much better and also more apt to demonstrate the organ's capabilities! [I'd also encourage organists to look at some more transcriptions of Debussy and Ravel, perhaps Poulenc (not to also mention arrangements of Russian and other non-French works) - and not always the most popular of their works (enough times organists' programmes aren't meaty enough)!!] That Mr. Michael Murray specialises in French Romantic music is obvious; it however is in my honest opinion wasted effort much of the time!! The Franck Chorale #2 - and most or all of César Franck's organ music deserves to be in the repertoire (the inspiration and thematic material's quality ensure that even if some of the development thereof sometimes leaves something to be desired...)! The Vierne pieces chosen also make a good case, although clearly they're not quite in the same league as the 1st-rate composers. The Widor and Dupré, however, are simply GARBAGE!!!! Their inclusion brings the repertoire selection to rate only 3 stars, degrading the CD's overall grade to 4. February 22, 2008

Devine

I'm a big fan of Mr. Murray's organ playing. In fact I love it as much as I detest his fellow American Newman.

The acoustic of this huge cathedral is captured nicely on this wonderful CD ... especially the ear splitting State Trumpet (listen to tracks 1 and 2). There is a delicious account of Widor (one of the movements from Symphony 6 is perfect and makes me hanker for the whole cycle on this monsterous organ.

It's a shame that organ CDs seem to be hotch potch collections of famous music, but I think that's just the nature of the beast. Sadly, not ever piece on this CD thrilled me as much as the Widor, but that's just personal. I'll most definitely look out for more CDs from St. John the Devine as the organ is to be heard to be believed!

July 30, 2007

Vibrant sound and Performance, some questionable interpretetations

This particular michael murray recording makes up for the lack of recordings of the magnificent organ in St. John Divine. It is perhaps one of the greatest and largest American organs, notably the very powerful state trumpet stop located underneath one of the rose windows (This is one of the few stops of its kind in existence). The Agincourt Hynm really shows off what this stop is capable of. There is some good variety in this recording, although sometimes I felt that the State Trumpet was used in excess (it became annoying at points, simply because it was so powerful and overused). The biggest downfall of this recording is the interpretation of the Widor Symphony VI Finale. I felt the tempo was extremely too slow, and due to this, was lacking the excitment of this wonderful piece (For a more exciting, no holds-barred recording of the Widor 6th, check out David M. Patrick's recording). Overall, this recording is very powerful and really shows off what this famous, yet, not so very often recorded organ can do. May 29, 2006

Good, but not the best ever

This disc has on it one of America's foremost organists playing one of the largest organs ever constructed. The result is a mix of good music well played with some rather irritating bits. Firstly, the Dunstable and the Purcell (actually by Jeremiah Clarke) make use of the incredible State Trumpet stop; whilst this makes for an excellent first track, in which it appears briefly at the start and end in a sort of fanfare motif, the use of this stop in the Trumpet Tune becomes ear-splitting and tiresome. Murray also has an apparent predilection for slower speeds (though in the main there is nothing wrong with that). Perhaps the most annoying thing is the second Vierne track (the Prelude in D major)- the sleeve notes make a clear point that "any music can be played on this organ", but whether as a result of the recording equipment or the gigantic acoustic or the instrument, it is as if this track was recorded through thick cotton wool from a distant room in the Cathedral. However, even with all these points, this is an interesting programme rendered with genuine sensitivity on a challenging instrument. Worth listening to. November 7, 1999

Highly recommended

I bought this CD several years ago, and I never get tired of listening to it. Michael Murray gives his usual brilliant rendition of some of the world's greatest organ music in a setting with vibrant accoustics as St. John the Divine is one of the largest churches in the US. This should be required listening for any organ enthusiast. June 27, 1999

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