It is rather frightening to contemplate the sheer swiftness with which Widor found his mature style. Every phrase on this CD dates from Widor’s twenties, and though he wrote much equally good music later on, he seldom if ever surpassed his achievements here. Alas, outside France almost no organists now play these two works in concert, unless they have prepared a cycle of all ten Widor symphonies.

Readers still unfamiliar with the composer’s idiom will find delightful surprises aplenty. To pluck out instances at random: in No 1, the richly Franckian Adagio, the once celebrated Marche Pontificale with its Elgarian tinge, and the Meditation which in the reticent pathos would not have disgraced a Fauré Barcarolle; in No 2, the prelude’s proto- Reger chromaticism, the Salve Regina movement’s effortless mystic rapture, and the Toccata’s harmonic detours (a thousand pities that this Toccata has been so comprehensively overshadowed by its hackneyed, inferior counterpart from No 5).

Perth-based Joseph Nolan favours a moderate approach. At times he might be thought a little too cautious, and he is not always as exuberant as Widor’s admittedly puzzling metronome marks would imply. For example, Widor gave a crotchet = 100 indication for No 1’s Allegretto; Nolan...