This very well-filled two-CD set (seventy and eighty minutes long, respectively) presents an exceptional performance of one of the major sets of organ music of the twentieth century. Ben van Osten, the organist, is one of Holland's leading players and scholars of the "king of instruments," and is a particular specialist in the French Romantic organ school. He is the author of a major biography of Charles-Marie Widor (Vierne's teacher and mentor), and has recorded the complete organ music of Widor, Guilmant's complete organ ...
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This very well-filled two-CD set (seventy and eighty minutes long, respectively) presents an exceptional performance of one of the major sets of organ music of the twentieth century. Ben van Osten, the organist, is one of Holland's leading players and scholars of the "king of instruments," and is a particular specialist in the French Romantic organ school. He is the author of a major biography of Charles-Marie Widor (Vierne's teacher and mentor), and has recorded the complete organ music of Widor, Guilmant's complete organ sonatas, and the six organ symphonies of Vierne.He is matched with one of the world's most famous instruments, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll's last creation, the 1888-1890 organ of the Church of St.-Ouen in Rouen, France, a thirteenth- to fifteenth-century abbey church. Widor, who inaugurated it, proclaimed the instrument a "Michelangelo organ."The recording, produced and engineered in 1998 by Reimund Grimm, nicely balances the direct sound of the organ and the ambience of the church. Grimm...
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