Music For Organ And Orchestra: Festival Prelude For Organ And Orchestra Op. 61 - Organ Concerto In G Minor - Toccata Festiva, Op. 36

Released in 1962 by Columbia Masterworks, this record captures a significant moment in the mid-century revival of large-scale organ repertoire. The collection features E. Power Biggs, a preeminent concert organist who played a crucial role in bringing the organ back into the spotlight as a serious solo concert instrument. The record brought together two of America’s most celebrated ensembles, the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein and The Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, to perform canonical works by Richard Strauss, Francis Poulenc, and Samuel Barber.

The production represents the high-fidelity standards of the era's classical recording industry, aimed at showcasing both the technical prowess of Biggs and the expansive acoustic capabilities of the orchestras. The inclusion of Barber’s 'Toccata Festiva,' which had been commissioned specifically for the inaugural concert of the Aelion organ at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia just two years prior to this recording, underscores the label's commitment to documenting contemporary classical compositions alongside established European masterworks. It remains a definitive reference for mid-twentieth-century organ performance practice.