A life at the console
Weir’s 80th-birthday box-set This 22-CD collection (Eloquence 484 1435) really starts at the beginning, with Dame Gillian’s recital from St Alban’s Abbey recorded the day after winning the St Alban’s Competition, marking the start of her recording career.
The set not only compiles her entire catalogue of recordings for Argo – including works by Renaissance and Baroque composers such as Bruhns, JS Bach and François Couperin – but it also includes no fewer than ten discs of previously unpublished BBC radio live broadcasts, selected by Weir herself. These include several performances at the Royal Festival Hall organ and her 1987 BBC Proms performance at the Albert Hall.
There’s her five-disc cycle of the then-complete works of Messiaen, recorded in 1979 at The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC, on the organ Messiaen himself chose for the premiere of his monumental Méditations sur le Mystere de la Sainte Trinité – the work which crowns Weir’s cycle. Then there’s the complete organ works of Franck, recorded on the Cavaillé-coll organ of Saint-sernin, Toulouse. And that’s not to mention all the modern British and French works also included…