Widor is among the greats of the Paris organ world, alongside Franck, Vierne, Tournemire, Dupré and (much later) Messiaen. Of all these personalities, Widor was the most detached, as if with him the mind rather than the heart spoke. His organ music, with its marches, scherzi and light-hearted finales, often has something vulgar about it. But that ordinariness is not a parody. Rather, it is the
… result of a sharp, lucid mind. In this, Widor resembled Stravinsky, whose neoclassical "pastiches" were not always understood either. Widor's earliest symphonies would have been better called suites. In fact, they are collections of individual pieces by a composer who had yet to invent himself. Around 1879, he found his form with the popular Fifth Symphony. Hence, armed with that experience, he subjected his earlier symphonies to revisions. Hence, too, this CD of early symphonies occasionally grants us a preview of the late Widor. Masterful is the finale of the Third Symphony: a compelling rhapsody that typically Widorian ends in stillness. Virtuoso organists sometimes miss such moments of contemplation. Not so Salvatore Reitano. He knows how to capture the depth behind the façade well, as his CD with the Symphonies Gothique & Romane (nos.9-10) showed earlier. (HJ)more
