Daniel Roth Plays the Cavaille-Coll Organ at Saint-Ouen – Daniel Roth, organ – JAV Recordings

by | Mar 6, 2009 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews | 0 comments

Daniel Roth Plays the Cavaille-Coll Organ at Saint-Ouen – Daniel Roth, organ – JAV Recordings JAV 165 – Multichannel SACD, 85 min. *****:

JAV Recordings is the brainchild of Joe Vitacco, a former Wall Street stockbroker whose lifelong love of pipe organs led him to start his own record label in 1997. By 1998, he chucked his Wall Street connections to devote his full attention to JAV Recordings, and he’s issued a number of very well received discs of organ and choral music. He’s also had a lifelong admiration for Aeolian-Skinner organs, and is in the process of working on a 16 volume documentary dedicated to the builders of those magnificent twentieth century instruments.

 
Another passion involves the restoration of the organ at the church of Our Lady of Refuge in Brooklyn, New York. A cash-strapped parish that mostly consists of Caribbean immigrants (many of them probably illegal, according to the parish priest), their church suffered serious water damage and the organ was in peril of being torn out. Joe Vitacco attended the church as a child with his grandmother, and that experience helped to shape his enduring love of pipe organs. He created a couple of videos that were placed on You Tube, and those videos have drawn responses from around the world, with nearly $20,000 in donations sent in. That’s only about a tenth of the cost of estimated repairs, but Joe says he’s convinced that he’ll see this through.

The organist here, Daniel Roth, is among the most accomplished and well-respected organists of this generation. The instrument is the Cavaille-Coll organ at the church of Saint-Ouen in Rouen, France, a church that dates back to AD 684. The original church was burned by Viking invaders in 841, and the current structure was begun in 1318, after the second church collapsed. The current building was not completed until 1851. The Cavaille-Coll organ that was installed has been among the most recorded pipe organs in the world, and is almost universally regarded as the finest of its kind. There’s a really interesting Q and A section in the accompanying booklet with Denis Lacorre, who is the organ technician at Saint-Ouen and one of the most highly in demand restorers of Cavaille-Coll organs worldwide. He’s also a trained organist, and was a successor to Marcel Dupre at the church of Saint-Vivien.

The music recital is a cross-section of some of the finest writers for the French organ, including Louis Vierne, Jehan Alain, Olivier Messiaen and Nadia Boulanger. Unusually for an SACD, the disc times at 85 minutes; while the first 64 minutes comprise the recital, there’s an additional 21 minutes where Daniel Roth improvises on the different ranks of the organ, and then offers commentary on each. For lovers of organ music and for students alike, it’s a compelling travelogue through the various sounds available to the organist. And through the efforts of Denis Lacorre, the organ at Saint-Ouen sounds incredible, and is one of the most well built pipe organs he’s ever encountered. It’s definitely stood the test of time and man.

This remarkably good disc serves as a thrilling introduction to JAV Recordings, and the SACD captures a superb representation of the massive acoustic of Saint-Ouen. This is truly an organ recital for the ages, and offers a tremendous education for the listener with regard to  the Saint-Ouen and Cavaille-Coll organs in general. Very highly recommended!

— Tom Gibbs

 

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