Ian Tracey & Yan Pascal Tortelier - Guilmant: Organ Symphony No. 2 - Widor: Organ Symphony No. 3 - Franck: Choral No. 2 (2021) [Hi-Res]

The 19th century in France was a heyday of construction for vast new churches and the massive organs that went with them; faith became a public display of allegiance to a particular set of values and a soul-stirring passionate music that went with them. It is, in a sense, unfortunate that the best known of all symphonies for organ and orchestra--the Saint-Saens No. 3--should be atypical, whimsically romantic rather than passionately austere and neoclassical like the Organ Symphonies of Guilmant. His Symphony No. 2 of 1874 harks overtly back to Handel for the passages of virtuoso display and the fugal scherzo. The Widor of 20 years later is far more a work of its time, sounding occasionally a little like Bruckner in its yearning woodwind runs and spiky rhythms. Tortelier has made a specialty of the French music of this period and has the sound down pat; Tracey is an admirable soloist, eloquent as well as virtuosic in the Franck solo that fills out the disc. -- Roz Kaveney