A very impressive piece. I had the luck to play it about ten years ago in Holland. This is a very beautiful performance. For me is the combination organ and orchester much more beautiful than piano and orchester...
These performers with incomparable skills and exquisite techniques are immeasurable , unfathomable and beyond description ， and full of admiration , acclaim and deep emotion From Tokyo of the Land of the Rising Sun 🇯🇵
As wonderful as this is, I wish the world could have experienced this same work with Dr. Harry Wilkinson at the organ of St. Martin's in the Fields Episcopal in Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Orchestra Strings and tympani. Awesome!
Great to hear decent sound for a change from a recording on Y.T. at the Great Hall of The Moscow Conservatoire, a venue noted for outstanding acoustics. Good performance if not quite as thrilling as the benchmark Durufle/ORTF/Pretre recording.
That's still the one everyone needs to hear, I agree. Duruflé's instrument at St-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris, where he worked and where that recording was made, is impressive and was in good voice at the time (with some tuning imperfections that arguably added a bit of gothic color). I believe that the published score credits him for the registration markings. I also read somewhere that Nadia Boulanger advised in some capacity, and I could see her encouraging Poulenc to borrow stylistic elements from early music, i.e., the evocations of Bach, Buxtehude, and the organ Masses of Couperin et al. in roughly the first half of the concerto. Late in life Poulenc called it one of his better works, and it's certainly one where deliberate stylistic eclecticism comes off well, another being the Concerto for Two Pianos (which is drastically different in tone).
Interesting that all these musicians are careful to curb their instruments' potential excesses: The organ is judiciously restrained, the louder stops pulled only when needed (only the one goof by the registrants); the strings clean and impeccably bowed (e.g., the triplets at 12:17 are quite clear, which helps this brisk passage hold together); and the timpani matching the balance but coming forward when called for. And God bless these Russians, they do the mournful final pages exactly right.
arm slinging organists with two assistants (and change the registers (oh, change pages)), who also approve and or co-conduct the organist's playing is .... funny
nah.. not the organist but the helper on his left... the guy seems to be directing the conductor! 2 helpers? the stops? look ant Blish.. but not before taking a relaxant
