Review - David Briggs plays Pierre Cochereau

Rupert Gough
Friday, February 21, 2025

Transcribing the improvisations of Cochereau has been a labour of love for Briggs since the earliest days of his career. To mark Cochereau’s centenary in 2024, Briggs shares a number of wonderful transcriptions (and the Suite Française made by Jeanne Joulain). The Exeter College organ, the first attempt to build a 19th-century French style organ in an Oxbridge Chapel, sounds glorious; different from Notre-Dame in the 1970s, of course, yet surely Cochereau would have relished this instrument; and one gets to hear a lot more detail of the intricate textures. From such a small two-manual instrument, Briggs captures all the magical sounds one associates with the most famous organ improviser the world has known.

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