O Perfect Love
Here Comes The Bride
Virgil Fox - Organist
A DeLux Decca 2 Record Album
A complete program of music for Wedding Ceremony and Reception, as complied by Virgil Fox and the Editors of The Brides Magazine
Produced by Israel Horowitz
Cover photo courtesy The Bride's Magazine
Decca STEREO DXSB 7201
1959
From the inside cover (double fold with extra page):
Virgil Fox
Since the organ is often referred to as "the king of musical instruments," it is safe to refer to Virgil Fox as "a king among instrumentalists." For not only is he recognized by the largest audiences in the history fo organ music as one of the instrument's foremost virtuosos, but breaking the rules of generations, he has explored and developed a wholly new tonal spectrum and a totally new style of playing to give the organ hitherto undreamed of dimensions.
While he was for 19 years organist at New York's Riverside Church, Fox's greatest renown is in the concert and recording fields. He gives as many as 70 recitals a season, many of them in halls where the sound of an organ has never previously been heard. He was chosen to inaugurate the new organ at Philharmonic Hall, in New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and one month later earned a standing ovation for the first solo organ recital in Philharmonic Hall. He has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the National Symphony, and the orchestras of Baltimore, Rochester, Detroit, Dallas, Los Angeles and Toronto, as well as with the orchestra of the Paris Opera. He has played 3 times at the White House, and performed 44 major organ works in a memorable series of 3 concerts at the Library of Congress under the auspices of the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation.
Abroad, Fox has performed on practically every important organ in the world. These have included the instrument at the historic Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach himself was organist, that of the Marienkirche in Lubbock, on which Buxtehude composed his organ masterpieces, and those of Notre Dame de Paris, Westminster Abby, Lincoln and Durham Cathedrals, the Kaiser's Church in Berline, and London's Temple Church, Royal Albert Hall, and Royal Festival Hall.
The Girard College Chapel Organ
The organ selected for this recording is situated in the non-sectarian Chapel of Girard Collage, Philadelphia – a unique elementary and secondary "school-home for fatherless boys" founded in 1848 under the will of Stephen Girard, the French businessman and banker who figured importantly in the American Revolution. The 4-manual, 102-stop, 6,587-pipe organ was built and installed by the Skinner Organ Company (now Aeolian-Skinner) of Boston in 1933, when the fan-shaped, 2,400-seat auditorium was dedicated. The organ has a novel installation 75 feet above the Chapel rostrum, where the main organ, in 2 chambers, and echo organ, in a separate chamber, are built around the 4 sides of a huge wedge-shaped mixing chamber, from which the sound is discharged through a perforated ceiling into the auditorium below.
Theme from Symphony No. 6 (Tchaikovsky)
Impatience (Schubert) (Ungeduld)
Silent as the Night (C. John) (Still wie die Nacht)
Theme from "Romeo and Juliet" (Tchaikovsky)
Bridal Chorus from "Lohengrin" (Wagner)
St. Anthony Chorale (Haydn)
Bridal March (C. H. Perry)
Trumpet Voluntary in D (Powell)
Rigaudon (A. Campra)
A Dream (Grieg) (Ein Traum)
O Perfect Love (J. Barnby)
Be Thou With Me (Bach) (Bist du bei mir)
Nocturne (Mendelssohn) (from "A Midsummer Night's Dream")
Theme from "Water Music" (Handel)
Praise My Soul (J. Goss)
Ode to Joy (Beethoven) (from Symphony No. 9)
Because (G. d'Hardelot)
I Love You Truly (C. Jacobs-Bond)
I Love You (Grieg) (Ich lid dich)
Through the Years (V. Youmans-E. Heyman)
