Christopher Jacobson returns to NativeDSD Music with his 3rd DSD release. Works for Organ features music from Saint-Saens, Poulenc and Widor. Jacobson is accompanied on the album by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Kazuki Yamada. The album entered the NativeDSD Top 10 Best Sellers list within 24 hours of release. It’s available at the Native DSD Music store in Stereo and Multichannel DSD.
The monumental and colorful sounds of the organ and symphony orchestra blend together perfectly on this splendid recording of Saint-Saëns’s “Organ” Symphony, Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani and the Toccata from Charles-Marie Widor’s Organ Symphony No. 5.
The majestic organ chords at the start of the final movement of Saint-Saëns’s symphony equal the sublime effect of Beethoven’s choral conclusion of his Ninth and have made it an audience’s favorite straight from the moment of its 1886 premiere. Poulenc’s organ concerto shows the composer’s retrospective side, while simultaneously offering flashes of his stylistic playfulness. After Poulenc’s serene concerto, Widor’s Toccata offers a vibrant conclusion to this program.
The Geneva Victoria Hall organ is played by Christopher Jacobson, who has already released a solo album with performances on the Aeolian Organ at Duke University Chapel, as well as a recording of Tyberg Masses with the South Dakota Chorale on Pentatone which are available from NativeDSD.
On this album, he works with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and conductor Kazuki Yamada, both of whom have DSD albums that are also available at NativeDSD Music.
Christopher Jacobson – Organ
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Kazuki Yamada – Conductor
Tracklist
Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.Total time: 01:05:08
Additional information
| Label | |
|---|---|
| SKU | PTC5186638 |
| Qualities | |
| Channels | 2ch Stereo, 5 Channel Surround Sound, 2ch Stereo & 5ch Surround |
| Artists | |
| Composers | |
| Genres | |
| Notes | NativeDSD selectively creates higher DSD bitrates of label's releases using two methods (Merging Technologies Album Publishing and Singnalyst HQPlayer Pro), depending on the original edited master source. In order to understand the processes, a bit of background is appropriate. NativeDSD sells only recordings that were originally recorded in DSD or DXD (352.8KHz PCM). The overwhelming majority of these recordings were edited and post processed in DXD, then converted (modulated) into DSD deliverable bit rates. NativeDSD acquires the label's original DXD edited master, and using Merging Technologies Album Publishing, creates a first generation DSD64, DSD128, and DSD256, as well as a DXD FLAC deliverable. Additionally, on selected recordings, a 32bit PCM WAV file is extracted (the DXD PCM FLAC is 24 bits by format definition), and uses it to modulate a DSD512 using HQPlayer Pro.The exception to the above are the few label recordings (Yarlung, Eudora, Just Listen etc.) that record in DSD, and do no PCM post processing mixing, level balancing, EQ etc. That's doable by restricting post processing to just editing, where only the edit transition interval (typically 100ms or less) is PCM converted, leaving the DSD music content unaltered when rendered. For those recordings, the DSD edited master (the actual recording master with edits) is used with HQPlayer Pro to re-modulate the missing DSD bitrates.Why do any of this? It's to provide a DSD bitrate deliverable choice, allowing a customer to purchase the highest DSD bitrate their DAC will support.It's correct that there's no additional music content information contained in the higher DSD bit rate from the original DSD bitrate. What's different is the uncorrelated modulation noise content placement in the frequency spectrum. When a DSD original file is converted to DXD (PCM), the inherent DSD modulation noise is removed through the decimation filtering, and re-inserted when modulated back to DSD. The modulation noise (again, uncorrelated) is the carrier part of the DSD bitstream modulation, and an inherent part of the DSD bit stream.
While the spectorial shape is the same regardless of the DSD bitrate, it's effective start and end points move an octave higher for every doubling of the DSD bitrate. For DSD64, the uncorrelated modulation noise is about -110dB at 20KHz, rising to about -50dB at 100KHz. For DSD512, the modulation noise is about -110dB at 160KHz, and -50dB at 800KHz. What this allows is for the customer's DAC to use gentler, more Gaussian shaped reconstruction filters, with far improved phase response. |
| Conductors | |
| Instruments | |
| Original Recording Format | |
| Producer | Job Maarse |
| Recording Engineer | Jean-Marie Geijsen, Erdo Groot |
| Recording Location | Victory Hall, Geneva in August 2017 |
| Recording Type & Bit Rate | DSD 64 |
| Release Date | June 14, 2019 |
Press reviews
MusicWeb International
Pentatone have presented these performances in their usual excellent sound. I listened to the album using the stereo option and obtained impressive results; I imagine that listeners who are set up for surround sound will enjoy this attractive programme even more.
Audio Review – Album Of The Month
The Mighty “Symphony With Organ” by Saint-Saens in DSD two channel and five channel files. This is a new reference for the sound of the great orchestra. It is our Album Of The Month on Audio Review.
Here we are in the splendid Victoria Hall in Geneva, where the great organ melts acoustically with the orchestra. Careful concertation by Yamada who eloquently proposes the noble line of the strings and pushes where necessary over the power of an enveloping brass section. incision rendering that combines the sound of an instrument with nearly 7,000 rods to that of a large symphony orchestra.
The multi-channel recording by Erdo Groot (his recordings are excellent and mainly appear on the Pentatone label) has become my new reference recording of this symphony.
Classical Music Sentinel
In this day and age of instant gratification, and obsessive time-consuming devices and apps like smartphones and Facebook, if a composer approached a concert promoter with the idea for a new work written for a large orchestra including a grand piano, and a powerful pipe organ, this project would most likely never get off the printed page on the grounds that it would be too much of an undertaking and way too expensive to promote and produce. And yet in 1886, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) presented such an idea as a submission for a commission he had received from the London Philharmonic Society and it was an instant hit everywhere it was performed and has become one of the most highly-regarded works for organ and orchestra as well as a respected symphony.
Camille Saint-Saëns threw everything but the kitchen sink at it, but unlike the work by Poulenc, allows things to unfold in layers and unleashes all of the available forces in a sonic tidal wave during the gargantuan final movement. This highly expressive account by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the direction of conductor Kazuki Yamada emphasizes the textural quality of the orchestral writing, and in doing so achieves a perfect one-to-one blend with the pipe organ during the beautiful Adagio movement. And as soon as organist Christopher Jacobson inveigles every decibel of power from the Van den Heuvel Organ of Victoria Hall in Geneva at that crucial first chord of the final movement, then the gloves are off and a battle for supremacy ensues.
Sure I’ve heard other recordings in which the organ was so loud that you would go around and check all your windows for cracks afterwards, but here it’s the balance between the organ and the orchestral forces that strikes me as ideal. So much so that the very final, glorious chord generates a uniform and unwavering aural impact.
Just as impressive, but for different reasons, is the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani in G Minor by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). For one thing, it’s the pipe organ that opens the work with a loud and stern declamation. And throughout every movement, the interplay between the strings and the organ is a wonderful thing to hear, as well as Poulenc’s trademark style of blending sacred and profane elements and features together on the same page. Christopher Jacobson’s perfectly judged stop registration within each movement always creates the ideal contrast between the pipes and strings, and again the optimal balance of power is attained, in both soft and loud passages. The final two minutes of the work are Poulenc at his best, including the brief tip of the hat to Bach at the very end.
And if all this glorious music wasn’t enough organist Christopher Jacobson tops it all off with a brilliant reading of one of the most famous organ pieces of all time. The Toccata from Charles-Marie Widor’s Fifth Symphony for Organ. Jacobson’s interpretation is slower than most I’ve heard, but after all, throughout most of the piece the right-hand plays eight separate notes within each beat, so when played too fast everything becomes a blurry mess. His equanimous account well demonstrates the qualities of the instrument they have in Victoria Hall. Pentatone has once again produced a well-engineered recording that despite all of these massive forces overwhelming the microphones, captures it all with plenty of headroom to spare.
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