The disc, under the Guild label, is available at OHS for $US15.98, but look around. I got mine at The Warehouse in 2001 for bucks five!!
Mr Kynaston recorded this virtuoso programme in 1995. In trying to be objective, I listened to a 1980 digitally recorded vinyl LP of Jane Parker-Smith playing the Fantasia and Fugue at the organ of St. Francis de Sales, Philadelphia, and Mr Kynaston himself playing the Inglostadt organ eighteen years previously, when the wonderful 4-101 Klais instrument was new in 1977, also on a vinyl LP.
Ms Parker-Smith plays superbly and at much the same tempo as Mr Kynaston, but naturally, the Philadelphia organ and venue have a vastly different ambience to the Inglostadt set-up, and the surface noise of the LP detracted from the effectiveness of the quiet and beautiful adagio.
In the 1977 recording, Mr Kynaston plays the Elgar Sonata in G and Reubke’s Psalm 94, and even through the surface noise the listener can tell that the instrument and venue are in another league altogether.
And so to the CD in question. The Klais organ and its positioning in Inglostadt Munster has resulted in a happy blend of “hard to imagine anything better” balance of power to reverberation period.
The great organists have a knack of playing an instrument to its best advantage according to the acoustics of the venue, and Mr Kynaston does this with spine-tingling musicianship. The opening Excelsior starts quietly, then plunges right down to the very depths of this organ’s power and brilliance. Thus, the scene is set for the remainder of the programme.
The recording engineer, Jonathan Wearn, has, with consummate skill, brought organ, organist and acoustics together in a package that lovers of romantic organ music must surely find irresistible.
