Carlo Curley is a very flamboyant character and the mighty Philadelphia organ sonically displayed here seems just right for his talents, which include the strongest projection of musical personality and a confident bravura which is often electrifying in its verve and technical security. Let him describe the situation of the organ itself, with endearing enthusiasm: ''Nearly one hundred feet from the Chapel's marble floor and above the vast coffered ceiling, entirely covered incidentally with real gold leaf, the organ, all thirty-five metric tonnes, and with 6,587 hand-made pipes, is miraculously suspended. In a chapel so cavernous, and with such remarkable reverberation, it is well nigh impossible to identify the source of the sound.'' The Argo engineers have mastered this reverberation and though the fortissimos are massive, there is absolutely no blurring: this organ is a truly mighty, yet very tameable, beast; for it can also yield the subtlest pianisssimo, which Curley takes equal joy in demonstrating, as in Schubert's Ave Maria. His playing is always dramatic in its use of dynamic contrast and the the slow crescendo he creates in the Jongen Choral is masterful.
He uses an unashamed sustaining tremolando in Wagner's Liebestod, which makes it sound as if it derives from Parsifal rather than Tristan, and in the Bach Toccata and Fugue there are eccentricities which strongly personalize the reading, even though it has great force and spontaneity, with dazzling bursts of energy in the closing section of the Fugue. ''I consider Bach to have been as great a Romantic in his way as Wagner or Brahms,'' says Curley. ''Having always played from my heart, I perceive this toccata as a giant recitative, the brilliant Fugue being an extraordinary complete union of music and mathematics.'' The Guilmant and Karg-Elert pieces also have a real sonic power and momentum. But let me now quote him again, referring to the remarkable opening Emperor's Fanfare, a very individual and effective arrangement of a piece taken from a double concerto by Soler and given the present title by E. Power Biggs, who made the free adaptation: ''This provides me with every good reason to display to you at once the crowning glory of the Girard organ, a singularly rare Tuba mirabilis. Its pipes lie horizontally or en chamade in the style of many of the grand Spanish organs for which this piece was written. This stop speaks with an unrivalled speed and clarity on twenty five inches of wind pressure, a veritable hurricane when compared to the two to four inches common to modern instruments!'' The sound of the Fanfare is wonderfully throaty, but the tuba stop is heard solo, and just as dramatically, at the opening of Alain's Litanies. Although some may have reservations here about Curley's rather indulgent treatment of its basic rhythmic figure, there is another burst of sheer incandescent energy at its close.
The organ 'big brass' is again very telling at the introduction of the Grieg Sigurd Jorsalfar march and throughout the very orchestral tapestry of this remarkable instrument is superbly displayed in the hands of a musician who clearly revels in its endless possibilities of colour and spectacle. This really is a demonstration disc: the Bach cadences bring some stunning pedal sounds and they are caught here with complete clarity, full depth and absolute realism. I must go to Girard College Chapel next time I am in Philadelphia!'