30 minutes of undiluted Reger organ music is a daunting prospect, even for deeply committed critics, but this huge wodge of labyrinthine textural lines, writhing around each other like so many snakes emerging from the rocks on the chase for a snack, and Reger’s tortuous chromatic diversions, passes (it seems) in the twinkling of an eye (almost). What makes the unpalatable palatable and the impenetrably dense merely opaque, is the seemingly limitless array of colours, timbres and dynamic shades on this mighty Skinner organ of the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in the University of Chicago.

Of course, any organ, no matter how well endowed, is only a noise-producing machine. It takes a player with an ear for registration to turn that multiplicity of noises into enticingly appropriate sound, it takes a real musician to transform those sounds into credible music, and it takes a very special person indeed to communicate persuasive musical arguments and enticing organ sound to those listening via the impersonal medium of a digital recording. In Isabelle Demers, we have just such a person. She has a splendid gift for registration, somehow showing off the vast resources of this organ while, at the same time, making the sounds produced seem utterly appropriate to the music played, and she has that innate understanding of the music which not only makes total sense to those of us listening, but communicates what the composer is saying with complete conviction.”

Marc Rochester, MusicWeb International