I doubt whether anyone would dispute Haarlem's claim to possess one of the very finest organs in the world. It sounds as wonderful today as it must have done over the two and a half centuries since it was first installed in St Bavo's church. Telarc, as is only to be expected, have captured it in a truly magnificent recording which presents as vivid a sound-picture of its manifest glories as any record company has yet been able to achieve there. When all is said and done, though, even the greatest organ in the world is still only a machine; it requires a sensitive and capable player to transform it into a real musical instrument. In the past it has inspired musicians of the calibre of Handel, Mozart, Liszt and Albert Schweitzer, but it seems not to have cast its magic spell over Michael Murray. I find his performance mundane to the point of tediousness.
Perhaps it is in the interests of displaying the organ that he chooses the vaguely silly registration for the start of the C minor Fantasia (a 32-foot pedal flue underpinning manual reeds), but elsewhere his registrations are intelligent enough, and as ever he delivers the notes with flawless accuracy. But he offers little by way of compelling interpretations of the music letting it all move along with painful deliberation and an obsession with the minutiae of detail which obscures any coherent overview of the music—he can't see the Bach for the keys, if you like. The Prelude in C lumbers along like a grotesque elephantine dance which seems almost to parody the essential buoyancy of its 9/8 pulse, while the Prelude and Fugue in E flat, which should positively sparkle on this glorious instrument, sounds decidedly lacklustre as Murray moves ponderously through the pages of the score (I had never realized there were so many) carefully detailing each note and offering a rambling discourse over the contrapuntal lines which soon loses all thread of sustained argument.'