Well that was an extraordinary recital, I’ve never been to anything like it. Firstly the restored cathedral looks fantastic inside, the masonry is clean and white, the rose stained-glass windows newly bright too. The huge space of one of the tallest of the Gothic cathedrals seems both enhanced but also relatable somehow: it doesn’t recede in to the dim distance like I think it used to, the bright stone and new lighting imposes on you.
I haven’t heard this organ since I passed through Paris on my way back from Lausanne before I went to university, when fortuitously the organ was being played. I’ve never quite forgotten the impact of this big instrument in a magnificent Gothic cathedral with the reverberations being as much a part of the music as the notes.
Hearing music of Widor and Vierne played here, on the instrument the composers were very familiar with, was a further revelation. Widor’s characteristic dotted figures make sense, he plays the notes, then waits for the reverb to come back, mangled and modified by the building.
And amazing just how loud the instrument plays. As well as show pipes at the front of the organ case, there is a formidable array of trumpet-like pipes aimed at the audience. They are just the tip of the iceberg but it has to be them that give the brightness and clarity for a particular stop.
The Vierne in particular started really quiet (in the context of a cathedral) and Yves Castanet built to a tremendous climax. But this wasn’t anything like Full Organ. Something like that came - surprisingly - in the last piece, a sonata of J. Reubke in C minor which resolved to a final and triumphant C major chord (if I saw his fingers correctly on the video relay from the gallery); though there was also a lot of wind noise in the sonata’s quieter passages...
Another performance built from the lowest of the pedal notes (the video helpfully showed the musician’s feet), adding notes that you hear as tones to those you mainly feel. Those pedal note pipes underpinning the music add another dimension you don’t hear anywhere else, even bass guitar doesn’t go that low.
The queue outside was almost biblical, all of us ticket holders. I reckoned there were about 1800 seats inside so that was longer than a promenaders queue at the Albert Hall in London. Everyone had booked well in advance so although many of us are tourists, this was an attentive audience there for the music, one musician playing a tremendous instrument in an iconic and much-loved space. Compare with the small audiences for organ music in the UK.
Playing style? Not prim but not overly showy. Yves Castanet let Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s pipes speak for themselves, and they did. He played for well over an hour and a quarter with only short breaks between the pieces and an assistant turning the pages (marked up in blue). Just when we had applauded - and realised how inadequate applause sounds in this vast space in comparison to the organ - Yves Castanet played us out with Vierne’s Westminster Carillion, in addition to the programme.
Yves Castagnet at the organ of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris
Programme
Louis Vierne
Cathédrales, extrait de la Quatrième Suite op555 des 24 pièces de fantaisie pour l'orgue
Scherzo, extrait de la Symphonie No. 2 Op 20 en E minor
Charles-Marie Widor
Extrait de la Symphonie No 10 Op 73 "Romaine"
Intermezzo, extrait de la Symphonie No 6 Op 42
Jehan Alain
Choral dorien
Litanies
Julies Reubke
Sonata pour orgue en C minor "Psalm 94"
Louis Vierne
Carillon de Westminster, Opus 54, No. 6
Playout - Carillon de Westminster, Louis Vierne