César Franck - Cantabile (Virgil Fox, Riverside Church, New York)

Virgil Fox (1912-1980) plays César Franck's Cantabile on the 1953 Aeolian-Skinner organ (5 manuals, 157 speaking stops) of Riverside Baptist Church, New York City.

This ever-popular 'Cantabile' ('Non troppo lento') is the second of the Trois Pièces pour Grand-Orgue, penned in 1878 by César Auguste Jean Guillaume Hubert Franck (1822-1890), the Belgian (Liège)-born Organiste Titulaire of the Basilique Saint-Clothilde in Paris, where he presided at a three-manual, 46-stop Cavaillé-Coll organ built in 1859, of which he remarked "Mon nouvel orgue? C'est un orchestre!". This instrument, sadly, has been rebuilt out of all recognition.

Huge thanks to Lew Williams of Organ Stop Pizza, Mesa, AZ for sending me this marvellous recording. If ever you're in the area, do visit OSP and hear the 4/78 Wurlitzer there...