Marcel Dupre, who succeeded his master, Charles-Marie Widor as organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, and, after years as Organ Professor, became Director of the Paris Conservatoire, was also in his lifetime the world's most famous organist, certainly its most accomplished improviser. Organ-playing and improvising met in his organ compositions, for, like some of Bach's some of Dupre's had their origin in improvisations. This splendid recording on the organ of Widor and Dupre by its present incumbent begins with such a piece, for Dupre himself explained that his Symphonie-Passion began with an improvisation he gave in America when the theme of Holy Week was suggested to him. The agitated pulsing of its first movement—''The world awaiting the Saviour''—could hardly be more thrillingly realized than here. It sets the standard for this admirably representative anthology of Dupre's organ music covering a period of several decades, from the most beautiful but strangely neglected F minor Prelude and Fugue of Op. 7 to one of the post-Second World War Inventions, Op. 20. The central Intermezzo of the Second Symphony has the right whimsey and colouring, but every item affords similar delight on this exceptional disc. Loud or soft, slow or fast, Roth always ensures that the essential melodic line sings in a finely balanced texture throughout, no mean feat in organ music.
The Saint-Sulpice organ is, of course, the ideal one for this music, Roth is an uncommonly fine organist, and the Motette recording could not be bettered, for it captures resonant ambience and atmosphere without any loss of clarity. The master himself left no more persuasive recording of his music. A disc for the permanent library.'