The organ stands at the spiritual heart of music heard in French Catholic liturgy. In this disc, Peter Stevens invites us to encounter two contrasting titans of this world, César Franck and Charles Tournemire, at one time teacher and pupil, who forged compositional idioms that continue to dominate the world of the organ and its use as an instrument capable of inflecting the spiritual sensibilities of French culture. The Trois Chorals of Franck are three fantasies, in which swirls of colour, harmony and at times sheer virtuosity evoke heartfelt emotional and spiritual convictions. Works from L’Orgue Mystique of Charles Tournemire build on this legacy, particular with its profound sense of metrical freedom, but root this deeply in the Church’s seasons and the rich inheritance of Gregorian chant. The grand organ of Westminster Cathedral gives voice to these masterpieces, in the hands of one of this generation’s finest exponents of the genre.
