Reviews
Scroll down for reviews from the current issue of Choir & Organ Magazine or click on the links below to jump to a specific article.
- Organ CD: J.S.Bach - Complete Organ Works
- Choral CD: Poulenc - Secular Choral Music
- DVD: The Grand Organ of Lincoln Cathedral
- Organ Music: Michael Finnissy - Organ Symphonies nos 1-4
- Books: Pronkjuwelen in Stad en Ommeland - The Historic Organs of the Province of Groningen
To read more, subscribe to Choir & Organ now
Concert: J.S.Bach - Complete Organ Works
Bernard Foccroulle
Ricercar RIC 289 (16CDs) [19:38:58]
*****
Foccroulle uses a series of historic organs, including the Schnitgers of Hamburg Jacobi, Norden and Groningen Martinikerk representing north Germany, Bettenhausen and Zella-Mehlis in Thuringia, and the Silbermanns of Freiberg Dom and Petrikirche, Ponitz and Pfaffroda in Saxony. To these are added the great Riepp organ at Ottobeuren for works influenced by French and Italian styles, the Schott organ in Muri which closely resembles the Weimar organ Bach knew, and the Holzay organ of Neresheim.
All these instruments are well recorded with a good sense of the acoustic, from the dry intimacy of Pfaffroda to the glorious spaciousness of Freiberg Dom. The very different resources of each instrument are used with great skill and artistry: the four manuals of the Jacobi Schnitger provide wonderful echoes in the early G minor Prelude BWV 535, while the little E minor Prelude BWV 533 finds a perfect partner in the Silbermann of the Petrikirche, where Foccroulle uses the acoustic to enhance the grandeur of the principal choruses. The Zella-Mehlis organ has tierce mixtures, typical of Thuringia, a sound Bach would surely have been as familiar with as the more brilliant Schnitger or Silbermann mixtures. Clavierübung 3 is played on the Martinikerk Schnitger, the Orgelbüchlein at Muri, and the Trio Sonatas are divided between the Silbermann of Ponitz and the Holzay at Neresheim.
Good notes on the music are let down by no details of the organs, not even online, which is a shame. There are odd occasions where a little more freedom might have been desirable, such as the opening of the A minor Prelude BWV 543 or the slow G minor Nun komm BWV 659 from the ‘18’, but these hardly detract from such a superb set. Foccroulle plays with great musicianship and a real joy in this wonderful music, and the match between music and instruments gives a glimpse into Bach’s actual sound world.
Douglas Hollick
Choral CD: Poulenc - Secular Choral Music
Norddeutscher Figuralchor / Jorg Straube (dir)
MDG 947 1595-6 [65:21]
*****
This CD will remain in my memory because of the stunning singing of the semi-professional Norddeutscher Figuralchor and Poulenc’s glorious secular choral music. It’s a revelation from the delightful settings of the Chansons français folk texts to the searing cantata for double choir, Figure humaine, and the captivating settings in between. The composer’s affinity to the poet Paul Eluard produces some of his finest depictions of a text – his painting of a landscape his second to none. The elegance, wit and craftsmanship of the writing are equally matched by the dazzling performance of the singers.
Shirley Ratcliffe
DVD: The Grand Organ of Lincoln Cathedral
Colin Walsh (org)
Priory DVD and CD PRDVD 4 [66:00]
****
Priory’s DVDs releases have now settled into a pattern following the successful launch of productions from Liverpool Cathedral, York Minster and King’s College, Cambridge. The latest, featuring Colin Walsh and the venerable ‘Father’ Willis/Harrison & Harrison organ of Lincoln Cathedral links a diverse programme of organ music with appropriate film footage shot in and around the cathedral.
Walsh, who favours French repertoire and excels in it, has found ways to make the Lincoln instrument sound Gallic, although nothing in its smooth, aristocratic sound can truly emulate the rasp of Cavaillé-Coll reeds – and thank goodness for that, some would say. This beguiling Frenchness is displayed to good effect in the Incantation pour un jour Saint by Walsh’s teacher Jean Langlais, in Messiaen’s Apparition de l’église éternelle, Vierne’s Carillon de Longpoint and ‘The Swan’ from Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. There are swans on nearby Brayford Pool, terminus of the Fossdyke and Witham Navigation, and in a comprehensive bestiary of animals and gargoyles to be found in the glass and stone-carvings of the cathedral – none escape Richard Knight’s smoothly roving cameras.
There’s a good helping of Bach to show off the tonal versatility of the organ – the Prelude & Fugue in G major BWV 541, In dulci jubilo BWV 608, and the Magnificat BWV 733. In the included DVD extras, Walsh demonstrates how the Harrison additions to the ‘Father’ Willis specification have greatly extended the organ’s artistic reach. English music features prominently: an opening Fanfare by Francis Jackson; Howells’s Rhapsody no.1 in D flat op 17; Elgar’s Nimrod; and Byrd’s Miserere and George J. Bennett’s Elegiac Prelude offered as homage to previous cathedral organists. For the latter, the camera roves around the pipework as Walsh seeks out some ravishing sounds among the quieter stops.
As part of a tribute to the cathedral's local military connections, Walsh performs his own arrangement of Eric Coates’s Dambusters March, at the climax of which we see (and later hear) a circling Lancaster bomber – it’s one of the original aircraft used to deploy Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb in the famous attacks on German dams during the second world war. Priory scored a remarkable coup when the Royal Air Force offered to buzz the cathedral at 1,000 feet for the cameras – after a couple of false starts, the footage was secured, and unexpectedly moving it is too.
Health and safety obstacles were overcome to film the cathedral bells to accompany the Vierne; and Walsh’s programme ends with the Prélude et Danse Fuguée by Gaston Litaize, its spiky rhythms accompanied by shots of more gargoyles, a rabbit, and the famous ‘Lincoln Imp’. Throughout the DVD extras, including a demonstration of the organ and a brief discourse on ‘Father’ Willis, Walsh is a patient and sympathetic guide. Never given to inappropriate showiness in his playing, his deep knowledge of, and love for, an organ he has got to know over 30 years shines through. And as always with these productions, should you tire of looking at the pictures, you can pop in the accompanying CD and just enjoy the music.
Graeme Kay
Organ Music: Michael Finnissy - Organ Symphonies nos 1-4
Oxford University Press £40.00
Everyone knows Mahler’s dictum: ‘the symphony must be like the world: it must contain everything’. Michael Finnissy’s intriguing single-movement works, composed between 2002 and 2008 (although the Third has its origins in a work from the early 1960s) certainly contain a great deal; allusions to Beethoven 5, Mahler 8, Brahms 3 and Bruckner 1 rub shoulders with fragments of 19th-century American hymnody and (in Symphony 4) an elegant deconstruction/development of an unfinished Bach chorale prelude. All four symphonies inhabit a world of compositional finesse and intellectual seriousness, which can sometimes seem all too rare in the organ repertoire. It should also be said that, like much of Michael Finnissy’s music, they make ferocious demands on player and listener, and on first sight the scores are daunting. But they are difficult for a reason, and the rewards to be reaped from careful study of these works will be considerable. Players who already have a substantial amount of contemporary repertoire under their fingers will find an encounter with any of these pieces satisfying, but Symphony 4, while still enormously testing to perform, may well be the place to start, with an ending of notable emotional force and . Elsewhere, technical demands are often gymnastic (the pedal cadenza of Symphony 2, for example, and the entire second half of Symphony 3), and complex rhythmic ratios – 5:3 in the time of 9/8, or 31:16 – need to be approached with a cool head. It’s difficult music, in the way that late Beethoven, or Nielsen’s Commotio, or Messiaen’s Livre d’orgue are difficult, and most of us will need to devote very substantial amounts of time to preparing performances worthy of the music’s stature. But those who lament the ‘exclusion’ of the organ from the mainstream of contemporary musical life should take heart that a composer of Finnissy’s eminence has added works of such significance to its repertoire.
Stephen Farr
Books: Pronkjuwelen in Stad en Ommeland - The Historic Organs of the Province of Groningen
Sietze de Vries (ed.), CD performances by Sietze de Vries and Wim van Beck
Boeijenga (www.boeijengamusic.com) book, DVD and 5 CDs Euros 75
The Pronkjuwelen project is a substantial one comprising a beautifully presented and illustrated book of over 100 pages, a DVD of nearly two hours in length, and five CD recordings of literature and improvisations, played by Dutch organist Sietze de Vries. The book is in three languages (Dutch, German and English) and traces the development of churches and organs in the Groningen region over a period of several hundred years from the Renaissance to the present day. Many instruments have been restored and the combination of text, DVD and CD recordings form a wonderfully informative trio of material.
The DVD features extended interview material with organ builders and organologists Cor Edskes, Bernard Edskes and Jürgen Ahrend. The programme focuses on the development of organ building from the 14th to the 20th centuries, with an in-depth survey of the organ in the Martinikerk in Groningen, up to the most recent restoration by Ahrend, completed in 1984. The quality of the programme is first class, with some fascinating cameos (for example on pipe-making in the Ahrend workshop) and many musical examples to illustrate the text. The interviews are in the original languages with subtitles – this is very welcome, hearing the experts speaking passionately in their own languages. The programme comprises a number of chapters, with special mention given to organ builders such as Arp Schnitger and Hintz. The balance between overview and detail is just right, and I enjoyed the CDs all the more for having seen the DVD first.
Nineteen instruments are used in total on the CDs, and the whole of disc one is dedicated to the organ in the Martinikerk. Wim van Beck plays the Pièce d’orgue of J.S. Bach to open the first disc. De Vries presents music by 18 different composers as well as a truly spectacular range of improvisations, which demonstrate the organs to very good effect. He explores these instruments through creative use of registration and the CD booklet contains not only full specifications, but also registrations for each piece. The notes on the organs are given in Dutch only. The term ‘aangehangen pedaal’ meaning ‘pull-down pedal’ recurs, as do references to pitch and temperament (‘toonhoogte.’) De Vries matches the music to the instruments in a most compelling way and the recorded sound is clear and well balanced.
This project must surely raise awareness of the historic instruments in this most beautiful of regions of the Netherlands, and I cannot commend it highly enough.
Graham Scott
