ANDRÉ ISOIR — Le Livre D'Or De L'Orgue Français (2013) 6CD-SET | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Recorded between 1972 and 1976 and winner of the most prestigious awards, Le Livre d'or de l'orgue français (Golden Age of French Organ Music) is one of the most comprehensive anthologies ever dedicated to this instrument. Leaving aside the six Messiaen albums entrusted to Louis Thiry, André Isoir recorded the remaining twenty-four LPs in a trajectory leading from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Nearly twenty of these titles survey the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it is these that are now reissued here. André Isoir evokes here his memories of this extraordinary undertaking.
While a certain universality guided the language of organ music in Europe until the late sixteenth century, nurtured on polyphony and transcriptions of vocal repertory, on free preludes or fantasias, the French school began to go its own way in the course of the following decades. It developed in the service of the Roman Catholic Church, in a context where plainchant retained great resonance, while the dominance of colour and a kind of intoxication with timbre resulted from techniques of instrument building that anticipated the tendencies of the repertory itself. From Titelouze to Dandrieu, the programmes presented here bear witness to the constancy of these factors throughout one of the most prosperous periods for French organ music, which coincides almost exactly with the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV.
Tracklist :
Organ – André Isoir
Notes
Coffret regroupant une anthologie des enregistrements réalisés de 1972 à 1976 par Calliope
Orgues :
-- J.G. Koenig Saint-Georges de Bouquenom, Sarre-Union (2-1 to 2-35, juin 1973)
- J.E Isnard Saint-Maximin la Sainte-Beaume (4-1 to 4-20 - 5-29 to 5-34, 1972)
- L.A Clicquot Saint-Jacques et Saint-Christophe Houdan (5-1 to 5-28, 1974)
- A. Kern Saint-Séverin Paris (6-18 to 6-31, juin 1974)
- F.H Clicquot Château de Fontainebleau (6-1 to 6-17, 1975)
- F.H Clicquot Saint-Pierre Poitiers (3-1 to 3-24, 1972)
- J.G. Koenig Bon Pasteur Angers (1-26 to 1-29, juillet 1973
- Haerpfer-Erman Saint-Germain des Prés Paris (1-1 to 1-25 , juin 1973)