David Briggs

"An overwhelming, all-encompassing audio experience" (Andrew McGregor on BBC CD Review - Messe pour Notre-Dame CD):

"...First though, a new recording of a Mass for Notre Dame by organist David Briggs, who seems to be one of the natural successors to some of the great 19^th and early 20^th century French organ improvisers: the likes of Marcel Dupré, Briggs’s own teacher Jean Langlais…and especially the great Pierre Cochereau, whose recorded improvisations Briggs has painstakingly transcribed, and re-recorded…

and he says that the music in this new mass is ‘about 15% Cochereau’, from recordings taped in Notre Dame in Paris in 1962. Briggs' choral writing is luxurious to say the least, richly reminiscent of that French romantic tradition, and sung here by the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge conducted by Stephen Layton…and the movements are interspersed with Briggs' own improvisations on one of the most French-sounding instruments in the UK: the organ of Gloucester Cathedral, standing in for the great Cavaillé-Coll and vast acoustic of Notre Dame itself. Here’s the Introit and Kyrie…

What a staggering sound! The Kyrie from the Mass for Notre Dame by David Briggs, and before it you heard his own improvised Introit on the Gloucester Cathedral organ, with the superbly-drilled choir of Trinity College Cambridge helping set that great acoustic vibrating. Sensuous sounds, gloriously over-the-top romantic French harmonies reminiscent of Dupré or Duruflé…and a recording that not only manages the improbable task of encompassing it all effortlessly, but capturing to perfection the radiant halo of the acoustic. Briggs’s improvisations between the mass movements are breath-taking…and the choral settings that follow, including his Trinity College Service, are the icing on the cake – or in this case, perhaps, the staining on the glass. How I wish Hyperion still made the occasional recording in surround…but even so, this is an overwhelming, all-encompassing audio experience. I can't resist it..."