Doing It Their Way - Sound Recording Review

National Review, Nov 25, 2002 by Jay Nordlinger

-- Do we have a "name" organist today? Not really, unless it is Marie- Claire Alain, still going strong in her middle 70s. Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs are but memories, except on recordings. (By the way, "E. Power Biggs" must be one of the strangest and most memorable names of the 20th century.) We do have, however, several top-notch players, including Michael Murray, who is a noted scholar/writer as well. Murray is an American, working in Cincinnati, but he had French training, with none other than Marcel Dupre. Thus, Murray is a continuer of that tradition. His latest CD -- on Telarc -- is devoted to the works of Dupre, Franck, and Widor; the organ he plays is that of St. Sulpice in Paris.

Dupre himself was organist at St. Sulpice, for almost 40 years; before him, Widor was (having beaten out Franck for the job). Albert Schweitzer, according to Murray, judged the church's organ "the most beautiful in the world." Murray is clearly an authority on this music, but, more important, he has the ability to execute what he knows. His playing is satisfying at every level.

Of course, the organ is a difficult instrument to capture on record -- there's no substitute for actually sitting in the pews. But technology has come a long way, and we're getting there.

-- The Testament label is true to its name: It provides recordings from the past that deserve perpetuation. Lately, the company has given us two albums of special distinction. The first is called Baroque Transcriptions, and features Ida Haendel, with the pianist Geoffrey Parsons. Haendel was -- is, I should say -- a Polish-born violinist who spent much of her career in England; Parsons was an excellent Australian-British accompanist best known for his work with singers.

The music on this disc is very much out of style: passe, smirked at, disreputable. The "originalists" and purists have taken over. But there is much to be said for it, and Haendel, through her playing, says it well. One of the items here is Corelli's "La Folia," transcribed by the master violin transcriber himself, Fritz Kreisler. It is from this piece that Rachmaninoff gets his theme for the famous Corelli Variations. Haendel also plays a transcription -- of a Nardini sonata - - by Carl Flesch, her teacher. (She also studied with the great Romanian violinist and composer George Enescu.) Haendel is, among other things, a link to a golden past.

Her playing will obviously be too Romantic for some (shades of Renee Fleming). But there is not a vulgar note in these performances. Ida Haendel is tasteful, elegant, and self-assured, exploiting this literature for all it's worth, which, again, is a lot.

Also from Testament is an album reviving a figure essentially forgotten today. That is Germaine Thyssens-Valentin, a Dutch-born pianist who had more or less a French career. As a teenager at the Paris Conservatory, she won the Premier Prix. A few years later, however, she got married, and spent the next 25 years raising her children. After this hiatus, she resumed her career.