Search - Virgil Fox :: John Wanamaker Organ

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Bob Zeidler | Charlton, MA United States | 07/12/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"...because, sooner or later, a copy of this incredible "collectible" will show up here.



It wasn't all that long ago that I bemoaned the absence of this 1964 recording of the John Wanamaker organ, by Virgil Fox, when reviewing "The first commercial recording of the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in nearly 40 years" (Peter Richard Conte's "Magic" CD, on the Dorian label). So imagine my good fortune in finding this listing of the Fox/Wanamaker CD after some little amount of searching. Not exactly "available" but worthy of bookmarking for future reference for those among you who collect pipe organ CDs.



This CD is a transfer on the Bainbridge label of the master tapes used for the original (1964) LP on the Command Classics label. (It was an LP that I first acquired in 1965 and then played so often that I wore out two copies, finally preserving a third.) It accurately reproduces all the important documentation on that LP, and, more importantly, it preserves for digital posterity the unique sound that Fox was able to produce from this magnificent instrument, which, at nearly 30,000 pipes, is the largest "playable" pipe organ anywhere. (There is a larger pipe organ, at about 33,000 pipes, in the Atlantic City [NJ] Convention Hall, awaiting restoration to "playable" condition. But it never had the reknown, and likely never will, that the Wanamaker organ has.)



Perhaps most appreciated, in this Bainbridge transfer, is the fact that there is a single - but significant - alteration of the tracks, placing the most important track at the end of the disc. This is Fox's famous transcription (starting from Leopold Stokowski's own transcription) of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Komm Süsser Tod" ("Come, Sweet Death'). Everything else on this album, fine as each selection is (and all of them are fine indeed), is but prelude to this concluding Bach work.



There is a famous Wanda Landowska bon mot that goes, "You play Bach your way; I'll play him HIS way." (This bon mot, erroneously attributed to either "a keyboard rival" or to Roselyn Tureck [who was of course a keyboard rival], was actually said in good humor to Pablo Casals when the two of them were practicing Bach together many years ago. I'm grateful to a cyber-acquaintance, A. C. Douglas, for clearing this matter up for me.) Needless to say, Virgil Fox played Bach "Fox's way" for the most part, and never so idiosyncratically - or as gloriously beautiful - as in "Komm Süsser Tod." The story - told completely enough in the booklet notes - about how this transcription came about in 1939, and how it affected the 13,000 attendees who first heard its premiere in the Grand Court of the John Wanamaker store in Philadelphia, is the stuff of legends.



And it affected me the same way back in 1965, when I first heard the Command Classics LP original in a radio broadcast, and bought my first copy the very next day. And, from that day to this, the effect has yet to wear off. Fox, in his transcription for this very special instrument, found the voicings and the stops, and the bringing out of inner lines, that make this piece an ethereal, shimmmering, transcendently beautiful work of repose in the acceptance of the afterlife. Bach was a man of great spirituality; Fox, in his own way, captured this spirituality so perfectly that his arrangement clearly is "the crown and glory of the album," as written in the booklet notes. I just cannot envision not being moved by hearing this piece.



In all the years since 1965, I've heard only one other recorded organ performance of Fox's setting of "Komm Süsser Tod." It was by Frederick Swann, both colleague and rival to Fox at the Riverside Church in New York, and can be found elsewhere on a tribute album to Fox called "Virgil Fox: Memorial Concert" (on the Gothic label). I recommend that 2-CD album, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the death of Fox, as heartily as I recommend this one. It was perhaps only natural that Swann include this work among his personal tributes. And, though Swann uses Fox's transcription, accurate right down to stops and voicings, and though the Aeolian-Skinner organ at the Riverside Church is one of the finest installations found anywhere, the difference between the two recordings couldn't be more obvious: Fox clearly had the Wanamaker organ's glorious sound and very unique capabilities in mind when he first prepared this transcription in 1939.



Some estimate of the value of this CD release can be gained from a small sidebar in the booklet notes, in which the president of the Virgil Fox Society wrote that the "Virgil Fox plays the John Wanamaker Organ - Philadelphia" album was the unanimous choice of Society members for transfer from master tapes to CD. I agree totally.



Bob Zeidler"

Virgil Fox Plays the John Wanamaker Organ

rbtwright | Birmingham, AL | 05/23/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For pipe organ aficionados, from casual to rabid, this history-making recording of the world's largest ongoing installation is a must have. No other instrument captures the sweep and power of this organ, the true "King of Instruments." The genuis touch of Virgil Fox in this recording is unsurpassed anywhere."