Maurice Durufle: Complete Organ Works – Stephane Mottoul

   in Choir & Organ (Nov, 2018)
The new Diekirch organ is clearly capturing the imagination. I wrote about Maurice Clement’s remarkable Wagner-influenced CD in these pages recently, and Reitze Smits has also recorded a CD of Rachmaninov transcriptions. Here, the Belgian organist Stéphane Mottoul (b.1990) – who studied in Paris and Stuttgart – makes use of it for a stellar complete Duruflé. There is a real poetry about this organ; the pair of swell boxes, fabulous colour reeds, layers of 8ft colour and splendid acoustics all help. Thomas’s amplification of its Franco-Germanic basis (a much-altered 1870 Dalstein-Haerpfer organ) is a good starting point for Duruflé, whose ideal organ encompassed the tastes of the organ reform movement alongside …