The International Historical Organ Recording Collection

Fernando Germani, 1906 – 1998. Fernando Germani was an Italian organist. He studied in Rome, and at age eight he started taking lessons in composition from Resphigi who headed Germani toward the organ. In 1921 he began a career as organist. He has taught in Siena and Rome and played widely in the USA. He gave Bach's complete organ works for the first time in Italy in 1945, repeating them several times, and was first organist at St Peter's, Rome, 1948-59. Spanning a career of almost seventy-five years, Germani also was a celebrated teacher in Italy. He died in 1998. Here is a funny story; Pageant by Leo Sowerby was written in 1931, at the request of Germani. Germani had played Sowerby's Medieval Poem on his first concert in the United States, under the composer's baton. The Italian possessed a phenomenal pedal technique, and Sowerby's Pageant was very obviously intended as a direct challenge. In form it is a set of ingenious variations on a rather perfunctory theme,...

Marcel Dupré and Jeanne Demessieux hardly need any introduction. They were some of the most prominent exponents of the French organ style and two of the most celebrated performers. Anyway, here is a little biography from Wikipedia: Marcel Dupré, May 3, 1886 – May 30, 1971 Marcel Dupré was born in Rouen. Born into a musical family. Dupré entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1904, where he studied with Louis Diémer and Lazare Lévy (piano), Alexandre Guilmant and Louis Vierne (organ), and Charles-Marie Widor (composition). In 1926, he was appointed professor of organ performance and improvisation at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he held until 1954. In 1934, Dupré succeeded Charles-Marie Widor as titular organist at St. Sulpice in Paris, a post he held until his death in 1971. (Partly from Wikipedia) These recordings were recorded for the British Decca Records in the 1940s. They were recorded in Saint Mark Church in North Audley Street in London on an organ which was maybe not ideally ...