One of my organ tutors was a woman, the majority of my own organ pupils were women, and having been outnumbered by women at most organists’ meetings, I have to say that from my experience women organists need no special promotion. Clearly, though, the concept of a female organist is something of a novelty for some; why else produce this disc, especially when the quality of many of the recordings is so poor? A splendid booklet-note points out that the first known organist was a woman who owed her place in history to her husband (a Greek by the name of Ktesibios, usually accredited with having invented the organ) and it is interesting to note that at least one of these ‘Famous Women Organists’ had a rather more famous organist as a husband.
Not that Marie-Madeleine Durufle’s inclusion on this commemoration of the great and good in French women organists is simply reflected glory, although she is playing one of her husband’s best-known works on the organ he played himself for several decades (St Etienne-du-Mont) – but it is a shame the recording itself is so muffled. The recording of Rolande Falcinelli playing music by Marcel Dupre (her predecessor in the enormously influential role of Director of the Organ School at the Paris Conservatoire) is also dreadfully fuzzy around the edges. But both these organists give us unusually committed and intense performances. Marie-Claire Alain and the late, great Jeanne Demessieux are both familiar to record collectors, but, heard alongside others of their sex and nationality, is it merely fanciful to detect in French women organists a tendency to edge their performances with an almost aggressive sense of rhythmic incision? Nevertheless all these performances would be worth hearing irrespective of the player’s gender.'