Search - Marcel Dupre :: Plays Bach: Art of Marcel Dupre

The king of legato...

S. C Rice | 11/10/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Marcel Dupre' taught at the Paris conservatory and has had a strong resonance with organ literature and pedagogy until recently. His legato interpretations had become the standard in Baroque organ literature interpretations. Organists have recently broken away from these ideas, but most students of the organ are still old enough to have been made to sweat over pretzeling their fingers in legato exercises and wonder how J. S. Bach actually could have played these various things legato. All this heady work on fingerings tends to distract the organist and result in a `cooler' performance. These ideas have been discussed and discussed recently... so here it is, the man who brought you the sweat of your brow in legato finger etudes, playing the baroque as legato as you've ever heard it.
Performance CDs of famous and influential people are always interesting. This recording features a famous teacher and composer. It is worth a listen for that alone. Anyone interpreting Dupre' works or interested in his works should hear this. Also, anyone playing the organ will want to hear who made the organ world legato (for a brief time). So how is it? Man, is it legato! The articulations are extremely precise throughout; the performances are calculated, exacting, cerebral. If you can hear Bach played like this, then this is the recording for you. However, all that precision makes the performance less affecting, `cooler' than many Bach performances. The recording itself definitely shows its age; the recording equipment creates a grainy sound and it mutes the organ timbres. All in all worthwhile, very much so."