American Psalmody, Vol. 2: By the Rivers of Babylon
Gloriae Dei Cantores
CD
$18.99May 31, 1999
By the Rivers of Babylon - Following on the success of Make His Praise Glorious, Gloriae Dei Cantores continued a distinguished series of recordings dedicated to psalm settings by American composers. By the Rivers of Babylon shows a wide range of style and includes several works recorded for the first time. From the lush romanticism of the setting of Psalm 137 by Charles Loeffler (composed in 1901) to the adventurous setting of de Profundis by Arnold Schoenberg (composed in 1950), Gloriae Dei Cantores explores the great variety of psalm settings by American composers.
Durufle: Complete Choral Works / Simpson, Cowan, Houston Chamber Choir
Signum Classics
CD
$19.99Apr 19, 2019
The choral works of Duruflé, like his organ works, are small in number but beautifully crafted. Frequently written and rewritten until he was completely satisfied, he was a composer who rethought and re-configured his music right up to the moment he had to let go of it. Often described as a man out of step with his times, his pieces look back to Gregorian chant and plainsong at a time when the musical life of his home city of Paris was steeped in radical new compositional ideas – a testament perhaps to Duruflé’s enduring love of France’s choral heritage. In a new recording produced by Grammy® winning producer Blanton Alspaugh, the Houston Chamber Choir are led by artistic director Robert Simpson on their first release with Signum Records.
-----
REVIEWS:
Recorded in warm, though not too reverberant acoustics, the choir’s tone is open and bright, and they and their conductor are sensitive to Duruflé’s demands. While they can be dramatic when needed, nothing is ever overstated – a temptation in this work, where there is little variety in tempi. The four unaccompanied Gregorian motets show offthe choir’s strengths to their best advantage.
– Choir & Organ
The unique selling point here is the highly polished, virtually flawless sound of the Houston Chamber Choir. Here is a group that clearly enjoys the art of choral singing and in Robert Simpson they have a director whose focus on producing a superbly homogenous sound makes for warm, comfortable listening.
David Goode continues his new series of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, played on the Metzler Söhne organ of Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge. is the eighth volume for June 2018.
This digital-only recording is available from all major download stores and streaming services in MP3, CD Quality and Studio Quality/24-bit audio. It is also available to buy as a ‘Presto CD’ – made to order by Presto Classical with a printed booklet and inlay.
Ash Wednesday / Nethsingha, Choir of St. John's Cambridge
Signum Classics
CD
$19.99Mar 06, 2020
Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent, the forty-day period of fasting and penitence which precedes Easter. Ashes are placed on worshippers’ foreheads in the shape of a cross, as a sign of repentance. Evensong on this day has been an especially important service in the liturgical year at St John’s; the BBC started transmitting it live in 1972. For several decades the service was broadcast annually; more recently it has been biennial. 2019 was a live broadcast year, however the recording on this release uses our own microphones, permanently installed in St John’s College Chapel for webcasting, rather than those of the BBC. This recording will be released around the same time that the Dean of St John’s, Mark Oakley, releases a book on George Herbert’s poems, called My Sour Sweet Days. The book and the recording go well in tandem, as in the Deans first sermon at St. John’s, he said “I believe that when we walk here (The Chapel), we walk into a poem. The liturgy is poetry in motion, and we sometimes fail to understand its density of suggestion, the eavesdropping on the soul, the sensitive state of consciousness that its poetry can prompt.” Joby’s audio visual collective Powerplant – where the worlds of minimalism and electronica collide – has released albums on Signum and Nonclassical featuring music by Steve Reich, Gabriel Prokofiev, Graham Fitkin and Max de Wardener.
-----
REVIEW:
The malleable, sensitive trebles have what seems to me an unparalleled ability to invest text and phrase with meaning without focus-pulling, which is a decent description of the choir’s whole approach.
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons & More on Organ & Violin / Gorol, Heinke
MDG
SACD
$24.99Oct 21, 2022
Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" is one of the greatest evergreens of all time. The sound painting of the Venetian violin virtuoso simply casts a spell over everyone. David Gorol and Theophil Heinke go one better: Their arrangement for violin and organ makes use of the richness of sound of the queen of instruments and adds a whole new dimension to Vivaldi's already broad palette. In addition, there is the A minor Concerto, which Bach had already transferred to the organ. The fact that a historical jewel, the famous Trost organ in Waltershausen, can also be heard in its original sound makes this brand-new Super Audio album a triple listening pleasure. Above all, Vivaldi's sound extremes are considerably expanded with the organ: it thunders and flashes in the summer thunderstorm, it's a joy; the horns blow cheerfully for the hunt, and at the latest when the birds warble in spring, one no longer wants to miss the flute stops of the listed instrument.
The adaptation is by no means trivial: the highly virtuosic violin part, which David Gorol presents on a modern instrument with somnambulistic certainty and a fine feeling for the drama of the score, remains untouched. In favor of a brilliant expression, a retuning to the historical pitch of the organ was dispensed with - a challenge for Heinke, who thus has to orchestrate in extremely unusual keys. As an encore, Gorol and Heinke also offer the distinctively arranged A minor Double Concerto. Here, the violin performs directly with the second soloists part played by the organ.
Joseph Nolan follows his five internationally acclaimed volumes of the Complete Organ Symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor with a collection of the composer's other works for solo organ. The release includes his Trois Nouvelles Pieces, March americaine and Marche Nuptiale and Memento - a collection of transcriptions of works by J.S. Bach. This release completes a collection of 6 albums that span Widor's complete solo organ works, performed by Nolan on period Cavaille-Coll organs from the French churches of St. Sernin, Toulouse, St. Francois-de Sales, Lyon and La Madeleine, Paris.
A prominent element in the shared culture of cities of the Hanseatic League were the pipe organs. Jonathan Moyer begins a series on these remarkable instruments in Lübeck, on an organ with pipework from the mid-1400s. Expanded by Stellwagen in 1637, the "north" organ in St. Jakobi was an important model in the revival of historical styles of organ building in the 20th century. Jonathan William Moyer maintains a dynamic career as church musician, concert organist, and pedagogue. He is the David S. Boe chair and assistant professor of organ at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is organist of the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, OH, where he oversees 2 pipe organs (Richards, Fowkes and Skinner/Aeolian) and a 47-bell Dutch carillon. Moyer has also been a visiting lecturer in organ at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck and specializes in a vast repertoire from the renaissance to the 21st century. He received degrees in organ and piano from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Bob Jones University.
Organ of the Stadtkirche St Marien Celle / Brett Leighton
Musica Omnia
CD
$14.99Jul 13, 2013
The Harmen Kröger organ of St. Mary’s Church in Celle, Lower Saxony, dates from 1653, and is witness to the changing musical requirements placed on the instrument from its first construction into the early 20th century. Restored in 1999 to its original state by Australian organ builder, Rowan West, it provides an authentic voice for the music of Northern German masters from Scheidemann through to Buxtehude and Bach. Brett Leighton, one of Europe’s leading organists specializing in authentic instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries provides a comprehensive portrait of the German organ of this period. - Musica Omnia
1 Dietrich Buxtehude: Toccata in D minor, BuxWV 155 2 Matthias Weckmann: Canzona (III) in D minor 3 Jacob Praetorius: Von allen Menschen abgewandt I 4 Jacob (II) Praetorius: Von allen Menschen abgewandt II & III 5 Heinrich Scheidemann: Praeambulum in C major, WV 72 6 Heinrich Scheidemann: Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott,WV 76 7 Franz Tunder: Praeludium in F major 8 Melchior Schildt(?):Wie schön leucht uns der Morgenstern = Johann Sebastian Bach: In dulci jubilo, BWV 608 9 J. S. Bach: Allein Gott in der Höh‘ sey Ehr, BWV 676 10 J. S. Bach: Toccata in C major, BWV 564
It is hoped that this selection of suites from Boyvin’s two important livres d’orgue will go some way to redressing the lack of awareness of the quality of Boyvin’s music. It is certainly different from the livres d’orgue of André Raison, François Couperin and Nicolas de Grigny, and it is wonderfully lively and attractive music, especially when heard on this historic organ. David Ponsford has spent much of his career studying this repertoire, resulting in his book ‘French Organ Music in the Reign of Louis XIV’ (Cambridge University Press 2011). The present series of recordings on the most important historical organs in France, including the music of Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, Louis Couperin, Nicolas-Antoine Lebegue, Andre Raison, Jacques Boyvin, and others up to the composers of the Revolution such as Balbastre, Beauvarlet Charpentier and Lasceux, is therefore the fruit of many years of research by a seasoned performer whose aim is to combine technical brilliance with intellectual understanding, to bring the music alive with authority and meaning.
Haydn: Organ Concertos / Quinn, Gent, Cohen, Arcangelo
Chandos
CD
$21.99Oct 04, 2019
Iain Quinn is joined by Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen in this recording of organ concertos by Haydn, recorded on the Grant, Degens and Bradbeer organ of St Mary’s, Woodford. Born in Cardiff, Wales, Dr. Iain Quinn is an award-winning organist, musicologist, and composer with over ninety publications across multiple disciplines. He is Associate Professor of Organ and Coordinator of Sacred Music at Florida State University. He has received a Fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and grants from Musica Britannica, Society for American Music, The Prince's Trust, and the Music & Letters Trust. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Visiting Composer at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. As a composer he has received commissions from churches across the USA and UK and from the American Guild of Organists. In 2017, he was a Fulbright Scholar teaching at The Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory, Russia and in 2018 he was the Rudolph Ganz Fellow at The Newberry Library, Chicago.
Rudolf von Beckerath built his very first organ for the St. Elisabeth Church in Hamburg. The "Opus 1" of the later world-famous organ builder has recently been restored to its former glory. Despite the extensive expansion of the instrument, it can still be played unchanged in its original state due to a technical refinement. Jens Ludwig presents the work with a personal selection and decided highlights of the baroque. Beckerath's original specification of 1951 could not be fully realized at that time for reasons of cost. 11 stops on two manuals had to suffice. Seven more stops were added a few years later, and this is the extent to which the instrument existed until its restoration in 2019. The clever double console houses Beckerath's original console on one side and its modern counterpart with four manuals opposite, which control both the "old" organ and its extension. This is an ideal symbiosis between conservation of the monument and innovative function. Whether Eurovision Fanfare, Toccata in D minor, Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, Handel's "Largo" or Bach-Gounod's "Ave Maria": you can almost sing along with this program. It is all the more beautiful to listen to the wonderful register colors, such as the trumpets in the main and swell sections in the pieces by Jeremiah Clarke, or the crumhorn in "Jesus bleibet meine Freude". The instrument is also excellently suited for chamber music or continuo playing. Here we hear Telemann's rarely performed viola concerto or CPE Bach's Hamburg Sonata in G major for flute and continuo. Most of the pieces have a direct connection to Hamburg. In the case of Telemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, this is obvious from their biographies. Bach and Handel also have their Hanseatic points of contact. And the pieces from France and England are easily justified by Hamburg's well-known internationalism.
Johann Sebastian Bach's organ artistry made a powerful impression in St. Catherine's Church when he applied for the coveted organist's post at the Principal Church of St. James in Hamburg in 1720. Since Bach, unlike his rival, was unwilling to contribute the immense sum of four thousand marks as his "dowry," he did not prevail but instead found a new job in Leipzig a few years later. In Leipzig he initially discharged other duties before he again came forward as an instrumental composer with a dazzling cycle of organ chorales in 1739. Andreas Fischer has freshly recorded this "Third Part of the Clavierübung" on his very own St. Catherine's organ - certainly in a rendering that would have brought joy to Bach, who could "not praise enough" this instrument "outstanding in every respect."
The Crown of Life continues the Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford's exploration of overlooked treasures in twentieth-century English choral music under Owen Rees. At it's centre is the first recording of Kenneth Leighton's Missa Christi (1988), the composer's final large-scale sacred work, commissioned by Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis. Alongside it are world premiere recordings of Harold Darke's Blessed Is the Man That Endureth Temptation and Imogen Holst's Out of Your Sleep Arise and Wake. Works by Rebecca Clarke and Gustav Holst complete the programme, offering a richly varied portrait of composers linked by study with Stanford and united in sacred expression.
Christopher Wells plays a program of original new organ music by American composer Craig Phillips on the Casavant Organ of Christ Church in Bronxville, New York. Christopher Wells is from Annapolis, Maryland, where he began his organ studies with James Dale at the United States Naval Academy. Mr. Wells received his undergraduate degree in organ performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music on the Dean’s Talent Grant. During these years, he absorbed elements of the Anglican tradition serving as Organ Scholar at Saint Paul’s in Washington, D.C, and taking lessons at Washington National Cathedral. Mr. Wells took his master’s in organ from the University of Michigan as a student of Robert Glasgow. While in Michigan, Mr. Wells also served as Assistant Organist at Christ Church, Cranbrook, in Bloomfield Hills. In addition to accompanying Christ Church’s four choirs, he was soloist for Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Timpani and Strings as well as the premieres of Enid Sutherland’s ‘Alpha’ and Emma Lou Diemer’s ‘In Hope We Sing, Alleluia!’
This is Volume 6 in Centaur's complete traversal of the organ works of Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937), performed on classic American organs by Joby Bell. Joby Bell brings to his performances a contagious affability and a keen sensitivity toward increasing an audience's appreciation for organ music. His recital programming demonstrates a varied and interesting repertoire, always enhanced by illuminating program notes designed to emrace all audiences. Bell is featured on several recordings. Born in 1968, Joby Bell attended high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he studied piano with Marian Hahn and Robert MacDonald. He earned the Bachelor of Music degree in organ and piano from Appalachian State University and the Master of Music and Doctor of musical Arts degrees in organ from Rice University.
