Virgil Fox at Wanamakers!
Wanamaker Organ (1964)
Lord & Taylor, Philadelphia
6 manuals, 451 stops, 30,067 pipes

Virgil Fox’s 1964 recording on the Lord & Taylor Wanamaker remains as exciting today as it was then. Re-released for the 100th-anniversary year of the Wanamaker—the world’s largest playing organ—this CD/DVD album features the famous Command Classics 40-minute audiophile recording on a CD and, in the same package, on the audio track of a DVD-Video. (During the playing of the audio tracks also on the CD, the DVD displays a collection of kaleidoscopic collages. )

In addition, the DVD includes an 11-minute TV interview of Fox at the Wanamaker Organ (1979), and a 30-minute performance videotaped in 1970 for the CBS network TV show Camera Three.

Played on the Wanamaker organ:
WAGNER: Fanfares from Parsifal
WAGNER: Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
VIERNE: Carillon de Westminster
BACH / FOX: Come Sweet Death
MULET: Thou Art the Rock
ELGAR: Pomp and Circumstance, March No. 1
FAURÉ: Nocturne from Shylock

The CBS Camera Three program, which is entitled La Belle Époque, was performed in a TV studio.

 

Played on his touring electronic organ:
HARRY ROWE SHELLEY: Fanfare
GUILMANT: Marche Religieuse
IVES: Variations on America
ELGAR: Pomp and Circumstance, March No. 1

The 11-minute TV interview was shot at the Wanamaker organ in 1979 by KYW-TV 3 in Philadelphia.