Charles-Marie Widor - Toccata from the Fifth Organ Symphony

Like a fantastic waterfall of crystal needles, the Widor's Toccata from the Fifth Organ Symphony has always stunned audiences with its perfect structure and impressive power. Published in 1879, it was the mother of all French-style toccatas, proposing a new musical form where a powerful theme played on the pedals is balanced by a brilliant perpetuum mobile at the keyboards. Widor, though very proud of his toccata, didn't employ any more this form. However the seed have been sowed and after few years Vierne, Boëllmann, Gigout and many others began to apply the master's lesson in their own famous toccatas.

This post, as the previous ones, intends to remember the historical organ of Nole (near Torino, Italy), destroyed in 2006 and now waiting for reconstruction. This recording has been played on a dedicated virtual clone, based on NDB samples. You can read more details in the previous posts.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Widor
• Toccata
• Fifth
• Organ
• Symphony
• pipe
• organ
• orgue
• orgel
• organo
• vierne
• boellmann
• gigout
• Notre
• Dame
• Budapest
• Shirokuma
• Nole
• federico
• piglione

[kreutzbach]

@drbobdrake Many thanks for the compliment! To answer your questions: 1) Gigastudio has been purchased last year by Garritan, so there are hopes that they come out soon with a new and better product compatible with the old sample sets. 2) You can still buy NDB library from the old website, but for now only in Kontakt format. 3) For my recordings I didn’t use the off-the-shelf NDB directly, but I worked a bit on the sounds. Glad to share some technical details if you are interested.

[drbobdrake]

@kreutzbach Your posted performances are indistinguishable from a real pipe organ, according to my ear. Congratulations. The dry Matyas Hauptwerk sample does not compare. However, now that GS3 and 4 have been discontinued, how does one use NDB, resuming you can still buy NDB? The "news" on the NDB (organa.org) website ends in 2005!

[kreutzbach]

@OrganNLou

Yes, of course, Hauptwerk is a powerful interface, now required by most off-the-shelf virtual organs. But I use NDB Full Edition and it runs only under GS3, so I had to build my own software interface to play it live. NDB is still IMHO the best symphonic organ library available, with clear sound and great ambience. If you compare the Widor Toccata played on the new Matyas pipe organ samples (under Hauptwerk) and the performance of this post you can appreciate the difference.

[OrganNLou]

You should try "Hauptwerk" a software based organ system