DESCRIPTION:
Marcel Dupré (Organ) - Toccata pour l'Élévation (Girolamo Frescobaldi) L'Orgue Italien au 17e siècle (The 17th Century Italian Organ Music) Parlophone, Anthologie Sonore No 4, Direction Musicologique: Curt Sachs, Paris 1935

NOTE: This rare cecording is part of the famous recording series “L’Anthologie Sonore” of the French Parlophone Records, which was started in Paris in 1934 (lasting until 1950s) by the German musicologist Curt Sachs, shortly after he left Germany due to the Nazi Party victory in the general voting of the 5th March 1933. Soon he met, in Paris, Mr Bernard Steele from the publishing House "Denoël et Steele”, who had already been involved into the editorial series with the German recording company Parlophone, under the title "2,000 years of music", a widely acclaimed series of recordings with explanatory notes accompanying each recording. Steele suggested Curt sachs continue that projest on a much wider ground, inmcluding a worldwide distribution of the records. Until 1937, when Curt Sachs emigrated to New York, where he started working at the New York University in the prestigious appointment of Music Master, L’Anthologie Sonore released 70 recordings at an average rate of 2 per month, a remarkable achievement for those times. The anthology was based upon three guidelines:
• Ten centuries of music: a living history from the Middle Ages (IXth century) until the end of XVIIIth century
• Absolute musical authenticity: music performances with instruments that are "authentic"
• Musical quality: from each composer to be recorded, only characteristic works were selected, reflecting the style or the era in which he lived.

After Curt Sachs left France, the series was taken over in 1937 by François Agostini, who had earlier been Curt Sachs’ associate in the Anthology. Agostini followed the same tracks as his predecessor, even in the dark days of WW II. At the end of his appointment (1948), another 70 recordings were released, until number 148. Then in 1949, Felix Raugel – a prominent fugure in French musical society - took over artistic since number 149. Under Raugel's artistic direction, the Anthologie Sonore moved to the new medium of those days, the 33rpm LP, yet popularity of the series have slowly faded through the 50's, to cease in the end of the decade.
-----------------------------------------------
Marcel Dupré (1886 – 1971) – called the “Paganini of the organ” - was born in Rouen (Normandy, France) into a musical family. He was a child prodigy. His father Albert Dupré was organist in Rouen and a friend of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who built an organ in the family house when Marcel was 14 years old. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1904, where he studied piano, organ & fugue and composition. In 1914, Dupré won the Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata, Psyché. In 1926, he was appointed professor of organ performance and improvisation at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he held until 1954. Dupré became famous for performing more than 2000 organ recitals throughout Australia, the US and Europe, which included a recital series of 10 concerts of the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1920 (Paris Conservatoire) and 1921 (Palais du Trocadéro), both performed entirely from memory. The sponsorship of an American transcontinental tour by the John Wanamaker Department Store interests rocketed his name into international prominence. Dupré's "Symphonie-Passion" began as an improvisation on Philadelphia's Wanamaker Organ. In 1924, he was elected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity, by the Fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the New England Conservatory in Boston. In 1934, Dupré became a titular organist at St. Sulpice in Paris, a post he held until his death in 1971.
As a composer, he produced a wide-ranging oeuvre of 65 opus numbers, and also taught two generations of well-known organists, including Olivier Messiaen. His most often heard and recorded compositions are Symphonie-Passion, the Chemin de la Croix, the Preludes and Fugues, the Esquisses and Évocation, the Cortège et Litanie and Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 7 (1914) with the First and Third Preludes (in particular the G minor with its phenomenally fast tempo/figurations and pedal chords. Dupré was the only organist able to play them until several years later.
As well as composing prolifically, Dupré prepared study editions of the organ works of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann, César Franck, and Alexander Glazunov. He also wrote a method for organ , organ improvisation and books on harmonic analysis, counterpoint, fugue and accompaniment of Gregorian chant, essays on organ building, acoustics, and philosophy of music.