Olivier Latry, resident organist at Notre-Dame de Paris, takes us on a journey through the machinery of the Great Organ against a backdrop of history and the incredible events to which the instrument has been both a witness and protagonist.

The life of a titulaire des Grandes Orgues is unique. Practising on the instrument means locking oneself inside the cathedral, alone, at night, seventeen meters above the nave, for a very special experience in which the power and elegance of the sound seems at every moment to be magnified by the forceful architecture of the deserted building.

What Olivier Latry describes and illustrates for us through his keyboards is the artistic might of the great resident organists of the last century, from Louis Vierne to Pierre Cochereau. Moving seamlessly between the sacred and the profane, for them, their mission consisted of establishing their status as organists in their own right, and a place for their instrument in musical composition.

Between its initial religious function and the interest of composers of all eras, the Grand Orgue Cavaillé-Coll reveals its astonishing modernity.