Works for Organ, Vol. 4 (Incls 3 Preludes & Fugues)

He was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of sixteen, and among his teachers was Widor, whose assistant he became at the great church of St Sulpice in Paris four years later. Having won the coveted Grand Prix de Rome in 1949, Dupré began his rise to fame with international recital tours, in which he performed, in Paris and New York, Bach's complete organ works from memory, a stunning feat which had been his ambition since he was a child. His American début concluded with an improvised four-movement organ symphony, described at the time as a musical miracle.

In 1925 Dupré bought a house in the Parisian suburb of Meudon, where he had a house organ installed which had belonged to Guilmant. Pupils from all over the world were soon to flock there. A year later he was appointed professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included both Jéhan and Marie-Claire Alain, Jean Guillou, Jean Langlais and Oliver Messiaen. In 1934 he succeeded Widor as organist of St Sulpice, where he remained for the rest of his life, improvising, as had always been the custom in France, for the Mass and Office, unfailingly matching the music to the occasion. He also published a famous edition of Bach's organ works, as well as text-books including the famous Cours d'Improvisation. In the succeeding years until his death in 1971 he received many honours and awards, and composed works that now appear on recital programmes and in recordings all over the world. On the very day of his death at home in Meudon, he had played two Masses at St Sulpice that very morning.

This volume of Dupré's complete organ works includes his first and last compositions for the instrument, the Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 7, written in 1912, and Vitrail, Op. 65, of nearly sixty years later. The former are among his best known works. Whilst their outer movements, in particular, exhibit the dash and flair of a young virtuoso, they also posses some of the qualities of maturer works, a complete mastery of counterpoint, individual chord progressions, and a sensitive ear for the variety of sounds available from the organ.