Far be it for me to complain that record companies are giving us a surfeit of Franck. But new recordings of his organ music have been remarkably fecund in recent months, and perhaps only our readership in Kuala Kerai might not have been able to fill this particular gap yet.
While this is an excellent release, so is most of the competition. Like the others, with the obvious exception of Nicholas Danby on Virgin Classics (3/91) who began to explore L'organiste, Piet Kee confines himself to the works for grande orgue, although there is a glimmer of interest in the Andantino, one of five harmonium pieces transcribed by Louis Vierne. A charming little thing this is too; a delightful melody set in the simplest of styles—and all the more magical for that.
Franck allowed little scope for individuality of intrepretation in his organ music; precise details of registration, tempo and phrasing are incorporated into his scores and only the criminally insane or wildly daring (Guillou on Dorian/Conifer, 6/90) would risk offering anything radically different. Kee's performances are obedient to Franck's directions (perhaps there isn't much in the way of maestoso at the start of the Piece heroique, but it's good to have a performance which errs more on the side of forward movement than pompous stasis) and come across with conviction and sensitivity.
What makes this a more attractive proposition for the serious organ-buff than some of the discs in the catalogue is the instrument itself and the extremely detailed registration information provided in the booklet. For a start, this is no mere Spanish organ despite a stoplist that reads like a matador's score-card. It is, in fact, a fine Cavaille-Coll dating from 1862, just four years after that built for St Clotilde in Paris. It is also housed in a sumptuous acoustic which Chandos have caught to perfection. Thoughtfully the Spanish stop-names have been translated into more familiar French and the system of measuring pipes in hand-widths (palmos) converted to the more usual footages. On top of this each stop is given a reference code which is used to give, quite literally, a bar-by-bar account of what stops are being used throughout the recording.'