Mailbag: “Hounding Fox”

January 2, 2009

Dear Michael,

In my youth I studied organ music and collected LP recording as most kids collected baseball cards. I lost my vinyl recordings several years back and I'm trying desperately to Duplicate the best on CD disks.
My question, there was a virtuoso composition that used very irregular, choppy, angular chordal themes, like something Aram Khachaturian would have written. The compositon built to a frenzed finale with what sounded like the organist opening up full organ and laying on the keyboard! My discription sounds frightening, but I assure you this composition really excited me as a boy...haven't heard it since the 60s. Could it have been a recording by Virgil Fox?

Bob

 

Bob,

Virgil Fox, in a recording made years ago for an LP disc released by Command Classics (white cover with a color photo of the instrument; Scroll down to 1963)
This included the FRANCK Grande Piece Symphonique, BACH's Passacaglia and Fugue, and "Dieu parmi nous" (God among us), from the Nativity Suite (La Nativité du Seigneur) by Olivier Messiaen.
That work perfectly matches your description of it below. It is available from the Virgil Fox Legacy

jmb

 

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