Intégrale de l'œuvre pour orgue

Description

The works for organ represent only 17 of Vierne's 62 opus, yet no one would now question his status as the greatest symphonist for the organ after Franck and Widor. His six symphonies are at the pinnacle of 20th-century literature for the instrument: the First Symphony in six movements with its fugue and its famous Finale ("my Marseillaise," as he called it); the Second, his masterpiece, with its sparkling scherzo; the Third, the shortest and most concise; the Fourth, whose tortured outer movements contrast sharply with the lively Menuet and the sumptuous Romance; the Fifth, the longest and in many ways the most elevated; and his sixth and final, the most advanced harmonically and the most complex psychologically, moving from the depths of despair to exuberance in its frenetic finale. In addition to the symphonies, Vierne composed several suites of pieces "in a free style," as well as collections of more impressionistic fantastic pieces. The music specifically designed for liturgy includes a pair of masses for organ – one of which is a requiem – and a triptych of meditations. Whether reflective and deeply etched with chromaticism or exuberant and thunderous, all of Vierne's output for his own instrument is conceived with the sound and tonal variety of the Cavaillé-Coll organ in mind – one of the greatest of all being the organ of Notre Dame in Paris, where Vierne served as the titular organist for many decades. The German-American organist Wolfgang Rübsam has himself been counted among the best living organists for many decades, internationally known through more than a hundred highly acclaimed albums of organ repertoire from the Baroque and Romantic periods, including recent recordings of Bach on lute-harpsichord for Brilliant Classics: "These beautiful performances memorably highlight Rübsam's sensitive and poetic side" (Classics Today). Rübsam chose an instrument with the full palette of tonal colors required to do justice to Vierne's unique style, and he invests the music with the spirit of improvisation and the creative passion that underlie his original conception.