David Briggs Pulls All the Stops

In Admiration of one of France’s Most Famous Organists, David Briggs Pulls all the Stops.

Notre Dame de Paris …

This latest release of Jake Purches’ is special on more than one count. Base 2 Music, being a respected organ music label, has released something that not only marks the centenary of one of France’s most famous organists, Pierre Cochereau, but also ties, by coincidence, in with the reopening of the restored Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, gravely destroyed by fire in 2019, of which Cochereau was its titular. 

… and Anglo-French Friendship Restored.

But there is more. In the wake of British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer’s recent visit to the French President, Emanuel Macron, celebrating 120 years of ‘Entente Cordiale’, it may even be taken as a post-Brexit signal of renewed Anglo-French friendship. An English label featuring French organ music. In this particular case, in recognition of Cochereau’s and his illustrious Christmas Eve improvisations in the Notre Dame Cathedral. 

Sacred Rock around the Pipes

In his remarks in the accompanying booklet, David Briggs writes about a concert in Notre Dame: “It was like some extraordinary sacred rock concert, with the improviser seemingly assuming a semi-mythical status.” And that is exactly what this album is all about. Paying respect to Pierre Cochereau’s nationality, it opens with two differently styled improvisations of the French national Anthem ‘La Marseillaise’. The first, pulling all the stops of the JW Walker Organ of Exeter College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, is taken from the funeral service of President Charles de Gaulle, and the second, more modest and emotional in tone, was improvised by Cochereau at a ‘Mass for Peace’ in the French capital’s monumental Cathedral. 

Whilst JW Walker & Sons in England may not have the same stature as Cavaillé-Coll in France, their pipe organs are nonetheless impressive instruments, capable of a wide range of settings and sounds. The one in Exeter College is an intermediate ‘instrument after the French Romantic style’ taking into account the size of the chapel, with two manuals and sophisticated stop and combination actions. Pipe organ lovers who want to know more about the organ history of Exeter College will find much to read in Andrew Allan’s notes and in ‘A Festschrift in honour of the twentieth anniversary of the Walker Organ in the Chapel of Exeter College, Oxford’ to be found HERE.

The Name of the Game is Briggs

As there is no dedicated biography in the booklet, I may add, for the benefit of those who may be less familiar with this phenomenal organ player, some brief notes about the soloist. Although currently Artist-in-Residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City (having held the same position at the Cathedral Church of St. James in Toronto), David Briggs is by birth as British as an Englishman can be. Born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England, he started his career as an Assistant Organist at Hereford Cathedral, moving on to Truro and Gloucester Cathedrals in the capacity of Organist and Master of the Choristers, before becoming a freelance concert organist and composer. 

“Recognized as one of the world’s most renowned improvisers” he surprises audiences during his busy concert schedule with transcriptions of such major symphonic works as Mahler’s Second Symphony and brilliant improvisations like, for example, last month’s ‘Silent Movie Improvisation Concert’ in the Herz Jesu Kirche, Graz, Austria. 

He has recorded over 40 CDs, though this new one is the only one in Surround High-Resolution, befitting his mastery to the fullest extent in its naturally sounding habitat. 

In this new album, all but one of the transcriptions of the original Pierre Cachereau’s improvising diagrams are Brigg’s, Those who like to listen to an organ at its mightiest will enjoy the pomp of track 1 and the paraphrase of the French traditional song (and used by Georges Bizet in l’Arlésienne) ‘La Marche des Rois’, or ‘La Marche des Rois mages’ on track 9, whereas ‘hurried’ souls will appreciate the tranquillity in the Berceuse ‘à la mémoire de Louis Vierne’, track2, where Briggs dwells on the beauty of the instrument, and the peaceful mood in ‘flûtes’ track 4. Storm can be harvested in Track 8 ‘Scherzo Symphonique’. 

In short, this is a kaleidoscope of sounds, moods and reflections dished up by someone who knows better than most how to stir up our emotional minds.

It Needs an Organ-Loving Engineer to Make It Sound as Good as It Is.

This release is indeed a perfect sampler of what an amazing organist-improviser can do on an equally amazing organ and recorded by a master engineering specialist in this field: Jacob (Jake) Purches, assisted by Christoph Martin Frommen for the mastering of the physical end product. 

Whether or not JW Walker sounds like a “French organ with an English accent” (dixit Olivier Latry, titular de Notre-Dame de Paris) or the other way around, as I see it: An English organ with a distinct majestic French sound, the inevitable bond between the two countries it represents remains the same, and those listeners who are not nationals of any of these two will surely enjoy it as much as I for what it is: A memorable concert by one of the world’s great organists.  

Blangy-le-Château, Normandy, France.

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