Four Bach works alternate with five of Thomas Ospital’s own improvisations and a set of six Études-Chorals by Thierry Escaich. The Escaich pieces date from 2010 and were inspired by Bach’s Orgelbüchlein preludes, while Ospital’s improvisations – which he calls Visions – take as their starting point not just the Bach works which precede them but also the notes B A C H.

Ospital delivers those Bach works with great virtuosity. The A minor Prelude has a fluid, improvisatory feel to it while its associated Fugue dances with infectious energy. The G major Prelude and Fugue seems slightly forced, as if such unfettered happiness does not come naturally to Ospital’s Bach-playing, but it wants for nothing in clarity of articulation and absolute textural precision. Clarity and precision are the hallmarks of a brilliantly executed account of the C minor Trio Sonata. Ospital’s playing of the prelude on the Passion Chorale may seem cold and clinical beside some but well-defined phrasing and an enchanting registration go a long way towards humanising this performance.

Escaich’s aggressively dissonant Études-Chorals were not primarily intended to display the sound of an organ but Ospital’s vividly colourful performances, bursting with virtuoso brilliance, do just that. And demonstrating the extraordinary range of the new organ installed in the auditorium of Radio France in late 2015 is what this disc is all about. The instrument was built by Gerhard Grenzing, a German organ builder born in Russia, whose firm is based in Spain. Ospital was appointed the organist-in-residence following the instrument’s official inauguration in May 2016 and this recording was made the following month.

Ospital’s Visions most certainly put this vast, 87-stop monster through its paces. Vision 1, for example, shows off the Effet de vent control as a shimmering array of tremulant-embraced sustained high-pitched notes rise and fade as the wind supply is manipulated by the organist, while Vision 5 demonstrates to quite amazing effect the programmable crescendo pedal culminating in the very highest pitched stops disappearing off somewhere into that aural area which, it is said, only dogs inhabit.