Performer: Jeremy Filsell (at the organ of Saint-Ouen, Rouen)
0:00 Prelude
7:22 Allegro
13:36 Menuet
20:33 Romance
28:33 Final
From the programme notes:
Louis Vierne's reputation rests nowadays, despite a prolificacy in a number of musical genres, virtually exclusively on his organ music. His musical legacy outside the organ Ioft is overdue for re-appraisal, particularly as his Mélodies, an exquisitely bittersweet Piano Quintet, a fine Sonata for violin and piano and an orchestral symphony all suffer from unwarranted neglect.
His primary instrument however, was the organ, an instrument which for much of the nineteenth century fulfilled, outside of a liturgical function, the role of the modern day symphony orchestra. Limited by and large to a restricted diet of popular symphonic and operatic transcriptions, it was Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) who virtually single-handedly resurrected the instrument's integrity and restored an awareness of the contrapuntal art in organ music. As the custodian of a tradition initiated by Jacques Lemmens (1832-1881)—one based on a study of Bach's music—he nurtured in the closing years of the nineteenth century, une école d'orgue du français. Important composers of Widor's generation, Saint-Saëns, Franck and Fauré, enjoyed careers as organists and their instruments reflected the technical and tonal innovations of visionary organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899). In the middle years of the nineteenth century, he revolutionised the organ as an expressive, communicative musical vehicle, but yet his new 'symphonic' aesthetic was as secular in inspiration as it was sacred.
The Quatrième Symphonie in G minor, Op 32 (1914) is dedicated to American organist William C. Carl and opens with a single haunting and sustained note, repeated four times; a plangent, tolling bell amidst turbulent times. The Great War had just erupted when this Symphony was composed in the summer of 1914. Cyclic in its thematic conception, it is built from material derived from two germinal 'cells'. Four pairs of chromatic notes (two ascending and two descending) serve as an opening idea [A] in the brooding, slow-moving Prelude. The austerity of the first subject is interrupted periodically by a second more lyrical theme [B], first heard on the Récit trompette. Although highly chromatic, the Prelude is relentlessly organic and the absence of resolution at its end is striking. The succeeding Allegro reverses the order of themes. Opening with the trompette idea [B] in martial mode, a second subject is formed from theme [A]. Its apotheosis is as unexpected as it is strident, affirming an emphatic G major.
The grace and charm of the Minuet seems momentarily to have forgotten the guns and the austere chromatic figure of [A] is converted to an enchanting and piquant idea heard on the Hautbois. In the central episode, the original sustained note from the first movement returns in the background and a portion of the trompette theme reappears. One of Vierne's most sublime melodies is heard in the Romance. The central section recalls the darkly dramatic nature of the opening movement's chromaticism, but the tonic key of D flat major grants the movement melancholic warmth and an atmosphere of solemn tranquillity. Intensity returns in the Finale and [A] and [B] are clearly identifiable in music transformed into a moto perpetuo of considerable drama. Ultimately, the original theme is transformed into a series of massive chords ending the Symphony with four reiterated tonic chords recalling the first movement's opening 'chime'.
