Latry is the titular organist at Notre-Dame, which means he is intimately familiar with the gargantuan instrument inside the storied cathedral. Unsurprisingly, Latry also has both the creepy looks and the heavy-handed organ style one would expect from a guy with a full-time job at Quasimodo’s pad. This selection of nine well-known works includes a couple of Bach chorales, Mozart’s “Adagio and Fugue in C minor” and, most intimidatingly, the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The program highlights the imposing physicality of Notre-Dame’s organ as well as Latry’s impressive dexterity on it, without sounding like the soundtrack to a bad horror movie. Released as a hybrid SACD, the disc contains a 5.1 surround-sound mix that is sonically rich enough to provide as much of a sense of the spaciousness of the environment as will fit in your living room. The sheer impact of the organ’s sound is magnified by the mix; thus, the heavy assault of the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” is that much heavier, and an excerpt from Berlioz’s “The Damnation of Faust” is nearly overwhelming in its intensity.
This article appears in Sep 15-21, 2004.