Salvatore Reitano - Charles-Marie Widor: Compete Organ Symphonies, Vol. 2 (Nos. 2 & 3) (2023)

Again not by chance, the “organ renaissance” is due to a deeply Christian musician, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, to whom also the so-called “Bach-Renaissance” is owed. Mendelssohn, a fine organ player himself, left important organ works and demonstrated the organ’s possibilities as a Romantic instrument, expressing the quintessentially Romantic longing for the infinite conceived as transcendence of sound and beauty.
After him, the axis of organ music moved slightly westwards and southwards, with the creation and establishment of an important organ school in Belgium and France. One of its most important members is Charles-Marie Widor, to whom this recording of the complete organ symphonies is dedicated.
His output of organ symphonies can be roughly divided into three periods, as indeed happens with most great composers: early works (i.e. those indicated by the collective opus number 13), works of the maturity (op. 42), and late compositions (Symphonie gothique and Symphonie Romane). These three periods do not refer to biographic elements only, but also to Widor’s compositional attitudes and to his stylistic evolution, with the first Symphonies which display a stronger attachment to tradition and to the past, those of the middle period characterized by a broader palette in terms of emotional and musical qualities, and the last one blending Widor’s religious inspiration with the novel languages of musical modernity.
In spite of these differences, what unifies Widor’s entire organ output is its tight and indissoluble link with a particular “object”. This object – but the term is utterly inadequate for referencing such majestic and complex creations of the human mind – is the Cavaillé-Coll organ played by Widor for decades.
If, indeed, the genius of Franck, Vierne and Widor could have expressed itself also through other musical media – and so, in fact, happened – it is also true that the magnificent adventure of late Romantic and modern French organ music could never have taken place without the indispensable stimulus represented by the Cavaillé-Coll organs. This was particularly evident in the case of musicians who, as happened to Widor, remained faithful to a specific organ – a Cavaillé-Coll, of course – throughout their career as church organists. The symbiosis between Widor and the St.-Sulpice Cavaillé-Coll lasted for more than sixty (!) years, from 1870 to 1933. The new possibilities offered by the Cavaillé-Coll organs were crucial for the development of Widor’s own compositional style, and for opening up new ways for organ composition in general.
The way for Widor’s innovations, however, had been paved not only by Cavaillé-Coll’s revolutionary organs, but also by the equally revolutionary teaching he had received from Jacques Lemmens. The Belgian organist had painstakingly studied the compositional and performing techniques of Bach’s works, and had become one of the leading experts in Bach’s organ music. As it often happens, the study of Bach is the prerequisite for being really and radically innovative in music, and Lemmens was no exception. His playing style, which was rather unheard-of, immediately appeared to be the aural embodiment of Cavaillé-Coll’s visionary imagination. The organ builder recognized and acknowledged the uniqueness and originality of Lemmens’ understanding of organ music. Rightly observing that his own innovations were doomed to remain fruitless unless a whole school of “new” organists gave them voice, Cavailé-Coll directly encouraged and prompted some young, promising organists to study with Lemmens. One of them was Charles-Marie Widor, who certainly fulfilled Cavaillé-Coll’s expectations to the highest degree. Along with former fellow student Alexandre Guilmant, Widor would also be responsible for transmitting the fine details of Bach performance they had received from Lemmens to their students at the Conservatory of Paris.
Their interest in Bach took also the form of instructive editions of Bach’s works. In general, their musical perspective was so radically influenced by Bach that they stood almost in opposition with the other great organ school of the French-speaking countries (i.e. that of Franck and Saint-Saëns): whilst Bach was obviously important for them all, the influence of the Bach tradition on Widor and Guilmant was dramatically greater than that on the other musicians.
These French-speaking organists were also in charge of a major novelty, i.e. to create new genres in which the organ could be, on the one hand, a musical medium capable of competing in terms of timbral variety with a full Romantic symphony orchestra; on the other hand, an instrument not perforce bound to its nature as a church instrument. The paradoxical element is that Widor’s organ symphonies are clearly conceived for the concert hall rather than for performance in a church, but they predate (by a long stretch of time) the installation of concert organs in secular concert halls.
This view, however, was already transparent in Widor’s primary choice to name his majestic organ works as “symphonies”, borrowing the term directly from orchestral music. (After Bach had employed this word to indicate solo keyboard works, virtually all other symphonies had been for orchestra, or at least orchestrated). Widor fully acknowledged the role of the instrument he played and of its builder’s generosity when discussing the Cavaillé-Coll organs: “Old instruments had almost no reed stops: two colors, white and black, foundation stops and mixture stops—that was their entire palette; moreover, each transition between this white and black was abrupt and rough; the means of graduating the body of sound did not exist”. In spite of this, Cavaillé-Coll is given the merit for conceiving “he diverse wind pressures, the divided windchests, the pedal systems and the combination registers, he who applied for the first time Barker‘s pneumatic motors, created the family of harmonic stops, reformed and perfected the mechanics to such a point that each pipe—low or high, loud or soft—instantly obeys the touch of the finger, the keys becoming as light as those of a piano—the resistances being suppressed, rendering the combination of [all] the forces of the instrument practical. From this result: the possibility of confining an entire division in a sonorous prison—opened or closed at will—the freedom of mixing timbres, the means of intensifying them or gradually tempering them, the freedom of tempos, the sureness of attack, the balance of contrasts, and, finally, a whole blossoming of wonderful colors—a rich palette of the most diverse shades: harmonic flutes, gambas, bassoons, English horns, trumpets, celestas, flue stops and reed stops of a quality and variety unknown before”. Widor further emphasised the opposition between a modern concept of the organ, bound to symphonism, and an older one, built on polyphony.
The entire tonal plan of Widor’s symphonies is beautifully conceived, with the first four symphonies, those of op. 13, organized as a tetrachord (c, D, e, f), followed by another tetrachord as op. 42 (f, g, a, B) and by two further ascending intervals (leading to c, op. 70, and D, op. 73). This seemingly surprising foresight is tempered by our knowledge of Widor’s painstaking effort to pursue perfection; this takes the form of constant revisions, at times ill-advised, at times right but harsh, but certainly always thought-provoking. One major revision is found precisely in the Second Symphony recorded here, whose Scherzo was excised in order to leave room for a piece on the Gregorian Salve Regina.
The op. 13 symphonies share the further uncommon trait that they are organized as “suites”. Movements called after the genres which were in vogue in the French Baroque populate the collection, and constitute a kind of purposeful anachronism. Another trait which should be taken into account is their derivation from improvisational moments, and from composed works dating back to his composition studies under Fétis, who had thoroughly trained Widor in strict counterpoint and whose teaching left clear marks particularly in organ works such as the ones recorded here.
With its numerous movements, the Second Symphony is one of the most varied and light of all. The Praeludium Circulare looks back to an ancient tradition, i.e. that of wandering among the keys, getting seemingly lost, and then finding the road for “home”. Other unforgettable moments include the tenderness of the pastorale, the space/time playfulness of the third movement, the Salve Regina with its skillful use of Gregorian plainchant, and the brilliant opposition of a touching Adagio/Andante and a brilliant concluding Allegro.
The third Symphony is dramatically different, and displays Widor’s deepened knowledge of compositional secrets, as well as his maturing personality. At its heart, flanked by a variable first movement and the timbral games of the second, we find the Marche, impressive in its colossal size. It is followed by a canonic movement which alludes rather obviously to Bach, and the enthralling finale which re-established order and hope.
Together, these two Symphonies display Widor’s talent at is purest, and his youthful elan which never contradicts profundity and depth.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023