Two centuries of organ music at the Chapelle Royale, Versailles . . . The recently restored organ of the chapel bears witness to the glorious past of this historic site and the magnificence of the royal liturgy. This project, entrusted to the four resident organists of the instrument, presents a rich panorama of the composers who had the privilege of entering the Versailles organ loft, from the Couperin dynasty to Balbastre. It forms part of a new series produced by Alpha with the Château de Versailles, which will present the fruits of the latest research into the organ repertory in a sumptuous edition.

This excellently engineered recital showcases an immensely talented pianist with something to say, and I look forward to hearing more.

The title, the photos, and the booklet notes aim to position 34-year-old James Rhodes as classical music's answer to Sid Vicious or Iggy Pop, an impression fueled by this pianist's past struggles with drug abuse and self-mutilation, together with his determinedly "unclassical" platform manner. But listen without looking and you'll discover a sensitive and imaginative artist with a lyrical gift and a bell-like keyboard touch. The Bach G major French Suite's quicker movements evoke a fuller-bodied manifestation of Glenn Gould's hair-trigger articulation, while the opening Allemande boasts inventive ornamentation in the repeats, and the slow-moving Sarabande oozes concentration and sustaining power. The Bach/Busoni Chaconne stands out for Rhodes' steady deliberation and an insidious cumulative arc.

Conversely Rhodes' flexible pulse throughout the Beethoven E minor sonata underscores the first movement's points of tension and the second movement's almost Schubertian melodic trajectory. Also note Rhodes' uncommonly clear articulation of the first movement's difficult, rapid rotary figurations.

The Moszkowski and Bach/Siloti encores exude old-school charm and mastery. My only quibble concerns Chopin's Fourth Ballade, where Rhodes' broad tempos and slightly discursive rubatos cause the music to ramble, in contrast to similarly subjective yet more cogently structured interpretations by Ivan Moravec and Claudio Arrau. All in all, this excellently engineered recital showcases an immensely talented pianist with something to say, and I look forward to hearing more.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Built between 1922 and 1932, the Grand Organ of Westminster Cathedral is considered by many to be the greatest achievement and crowning glory of Henry Willis III, one of England’s finest organ builders. Organist Robert Quinney plays 10 preludes and overtures works by Brahms, Wagner, and Dupre. “It’s quite an achievement to pull off orchestral transcriptions for the organ that don’t have you missing the original, but Robert Quinney manages this on the magnificent Westminster Cathedral instrument

There have been rare CD recordings exclusively dedicated to the organ works by Flor Peeters in recent years. Therefore, our new SACD-release with Peter Van de Velde playing the symphonic Schyven Organ (1891) of Antwerp Cathedral, is dedicated to the grand organ works of this main protagonist of the Belgian organ tradition in the 20th Century. The symphonic Pierre Schyven organ is an ideal instrument for Flor Peeters's large scale works. During his lifetime the composer even premiered some of his works on this organ. Peter Van de Velde, the titular organist of the Antwerp cathedral, choose a wise program across the entire compositional works by Flor Peeters, starting with the early Symphonic Fantasy op.13 and ending with the paraphrase of Salve Regina op.123. Between the monumental works he inserts some of the beautiful Chorale preludes from op.68 to complement the program in an excellent manner.

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Includes polonaise(s) by Michal Kazimierz Oginski. Soloist: Oleg Timofeyev.

Sarah Schuster Ericsson has been harpist of both the Baltimore Symphony and the Boston Symphony orchestras. Here she offers a pleasantly varied program within the rubric identified by the collection’s title. Most noteworthy is the 1961 sonata by American composer Nicolas Flagello. Although he wrote three pieces for harp solo, the sonata is by far the best known, appearing frequently on recitals and at competitions. In fact, this is the third recording of the work currently available on CD. Typical of his music, but atypical of conventional works for harp, Flagello’s sonata is dramatic and serious in tone overall, although leavened by a lovely, melancholy waltz-like slow movement, and a briskly exuberant finale. Ericsson’s approach to the work is richly expansive, in striking contrast to Erica Goodman’s meticulously precise, unsentimental reading (BIS 319). Some of Flagello’s works can benefit from an expansive approach: For a piece like the Harp Sonata, with dense textures and some rhythmic complexity, a broader approach can allow details to blossom, while a tighter, more metronomic approach can force those details “under the rug,” so to speak. On the other hand, taking expansiveness to an extreme can drain rhythmic energy, and cause the work to lose focus.

In general Ericsson’s performances are gracious and tasteful, if a trifle hesitant and reserved. Probably the best-known work on the program is the sonata by Paul Hindemith. Ericsson offers an appealing performance of this uncharacteristically warm and lyrical piece. Alfredo Casella (1883–1947), an Italian contemporary of Bartók and Stravinsky, was celebrated as a modernist during the early years of the 20th century, but most of his work has faded from view. His Harp Sonata, composed during World War II, pursues a gentle neoclassicism somewhat similar to the music of Gian-Francesco Malipiero, another contemporary of Casella’s, as well as a fellow countryman. From today’s perspective Casella’s sonata is a solid, attractive work with the slightly archaic flavor characteristic of the Mediterranean neoclassicists. Germaine Tailleferre is remembered today chiefly as the woman among the early French modernists known as Les Six. Her music leans toward a light-hearted cheerfulness that does not appeal to me. Her sonata is the least interesting item on the program. Pierick Houdy, a Breton composer who has spent most of his prolific career in Canada, is still active at 80, as far as I know, although he returned to France in his later years. His wife is a harpist, and he composed his sonata with her in mind. It is a pleasantly melodic, untroubled and untroubling work—another staple of the contemporary harp repertoire.

All in all, this is an ingratiating program, excellently played, and expertly recorded. I suspect that it will please most connoisseurs and enthusiasts of the harp.

FANFARE: Walter Simmons

FAURÉ Dolly for Piano Four-Hands. Masques et bergamasques for Piano Four-Hands. Fantaisie for Flute and Piano, op. 79. Morceau de concours for Flute and Piano. Piano Trio, op. 120. Aprés un rêve for Cello and Piano (trans. Casals). Pelléas et Mélisande: Sicilienne, for cello & piano. FAURÉ-MESSAGER Souvenirs de Bayreuth for Piano Four-Hands • Eric Le Sage (pn); Alexandre Tharaud (pn); Emmanuel Pahud (fl); Pierre Colombet (vn); Raphaël Merlin (vc); Françoise Salque (vc) • ALPHA 603 (70:32)


This comes wrapped in a certain air of carelessness. It might be called Eric Le Sage and Friends , and one assumes that Le Sage is the principal pianist, but there is no attempt to identify who plays what, on the jacket or in the booklet. Likewise, there is a reluctance to credit the arrangers and collaborators of several items, e.g., the contribution of André Meassager to the Souvenirs de Bayreuth ; some of which are taken at breakneck speed, thus obscuring their allusions to the Wagner operas they’re guying. In other pieces, however, gung-ho spontaneity is salutary. Going for the gusto, finesse occasionally takes a hit. Nestled amid the bonbons, a movingly elegiac reading of Fauré’s late Trio, too often dismissed as a feebly geriatric effort, makes a superb case for it and prompts one to hear Le Sage & Company’s three other Fauré albums. Despite occasional reservations, this gives pleasure. Recommended.


FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis

14 distinct titles introduce this exciting new series uniting the finest Alpha and ZZT Baroque recordings. Discover - or rediscover - universally known works as well as world premiere recordings of rarities. Newly conducted artist interviews allow for fresh perspectives on their recordings. All releases, digipak in format with trilingual booklets, feature photographs by great (Magnum Cooperative) contemporary artists adorning the covers and a strong 'queen of colors' scheme, bringing to mind gods, kings, warriors, the devil, life, violence and death... Themes omnipresent in Baroque art!

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Classical Music

From the 17th to 19th centuries Naples was counted among the European capitals of music; traditions of both composition and performance were fostered, supporting a local culture that was hungry for music, and the city's conservatoires started to produce musicians who occupied positions of prestige both in their home city and at the courts and theatres across the continent.

Out of the recently founded 'Neapolitan School' came a wealth of celebrated composers as well as the gradual romanticisation of the organ, which acquired new 'concert stops' in addition to a complete pedalboard; this release focuses on bringing to light the variety of music that started to be written for the newly improved instrument. As well as including the esteemed names of Pergolesi, Scarlatti and Durante, the recording takes in contemporaries whose music proves no less lively or elegant: from Porpora, particularly famed for his vocal music, to de Majo, from Alitieri to Zingarelli, the latter of whose sonatas reflect the prevalent style galante, the lively and brilliant style of the works draws attention to the then dominance of operatic culture across all musical genres.

The pieces are performed by keyboardist Emanuele Cardi, a Renaissance and Baroque specialist who also takes an active interest in the restoration of ancient organs. The recording was made in the Church of San Nicola di Bari in Italy, whose 1889 Giuseppe Picardi organ faithfully reflects the stylistic evolution detailed above.

Other information:
- Recorded 27--28 January 2013.
- A fascinating picture of musical life in Naples in the second half of the 18th century. Naples was then one of the musical capitals of Europe, housing a wealth of musicians, composers and an audience hungry for new music.
- The new style, as introduced by composers like Pergolesi, Scarlatti and Durante was a brilliant mixture of elegance, wit and the innate Italian flair for a good tune.
- Organist Emanuele Cardi finds the right sunny touch on the historic Giuseppe Picardi Organ (1889) in Bari, Italy.
Booklet contains information on the works, the organ and the artist.

BACH Italian Concerto, BWV 971; Overture in the French Manner, BWV 831 • Benjamin Alard (hpd) • ALPHA 180 (48:52)


The very first acquisition for any record collector seeking to build a library of harpsichord music should be Bach’s Clavier-Übung II . Published in Leipzig in 1735, it is Bach’s ultimate statement on the two prevailing styles of (secular) European music. At the very time that a bitter debate was raging in Paris on the relative merits of French and Italian music, German musicians such as Bach were embracing both styles by incorporating elements of Italian and French instrumental music into their works. Yet Bach went further than the rest; in the Italian Concerto, for example, he amalgamates the instrumental style of Corelli and Vivaldi with his own musical language, creating a one-of-a-kind piece that could never have been written by the likes of Telemann, Fasch, or Handel. Manfred Bukofzer calls Bach’s music “the fusion of national styles”, and the Italian Concerto is the perfect example of this. Aside from being tremendously exciting, BWV 971 is a pinnacle work of the Baroque that belongs in every library.


Prior to BWV 831, Bach had written many pieces in the French style, although he seldom used the characteristic double-dotted, bipartite ouverture as the opening movement. In the French Suites, for example, Bach typically begins with an allemande, in the English Suites with a prelude. The Fourth Partita, BWV 828, does begin with a grand ouverture , but this is a relatively isolated example. At 13 minutes, the opening Ouverture of BWV 831 is much longer than anything Bach had written previously in the form, a signal, perhaps, of how important this work was to him. The rest of the suite is filled with characteristic dances (gavotte, passepied, sarabande, bourée), many with doubles, although interestingly, there is no allemande. The work concludes with a Gigue and a joyous Echo; if the latter is played with proper spirit, it’s enough to get you up out of your chair and dancing around the room.


Benjamin Alard is a young French harpsichordist and organist who has a number of titles to his credit on the Alpha label. He has exactly one prior mention in Fanfare : Jerry Dubins called Alard’s recording of the partitas “the end-all and be-all” in 34:1. I haven’t heard that set yet (it’s on my “to-do” list), but I’m prepared to believe what Dubins says, because Alard’s playing on the present CD is very strong indeed. The watchwords are grace, precision, and a real sense of personality. For most recorded performances of the Italian Concerto , there exists a kind of consensus tempo in the outer movements; most performers, Alard included, cleave to the norm by adopting a healthy allegro and presto . The middle Andante is where the harpsichordist has an opportunity to make the performance his own. Alard plays the recurring bass motif (two eighth-note Ds) less ponderously than most; he does this by shortening the notes ever so slightly and inserting some daylight between them. The effect is perfect, because the music never stagnates, it moves along at a proper clip (the verb andante means, after all, to walk or move along). In BWV 831, all is well until the concluding Echo; Alard’s laid-back tempo here robs the music of a certain amount of drive and spark. It’s an interesting interpretative choice, but I refer the reader to the remarkable David Cates on Wildboar as an example of how outrageously exciting this piece can be in the right hands.


In Fanfare 34:2, I reviewed a Ramée CD with a similar program— Clavier-Übung II plus the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue—played by another young Frenchman, Pascal Dubreuil. Equally impressive—in fact, if you were to compare passages from the two CDs side-by-side, I suspect the tempos and other interpretative details would match up quite well. Choosing between the two comes down to the instruments, and perhaps price and availability. Dubreuil’s harpsichord, a copy of a Ruckers mis à grand ravalement , is sonorous and ideally recorded. Alard’s instrument, a copy of an unspecified German original by Anthony Sidey, has a singing treble and a slightly acerbic bass, making Bach’s part-writing unusually clear. The engineering is equally good. You pays yer money and makes yer choice.


FANFARE: Christopher Brodersen

Classical Music

The Best of Fryderyk Chopin, Vol. 3

During Haydn's successful stays in London he recognized the need for high quality chamber music for a variety of instruments, among which the flute, which rapidly gained popularity in bourgeois circles. For this purpose he cleverly arranged his own Duos for two violins Op. 99 for two flutes. These delightful flute duos, full of Haydnesque wit and invention, are here recorded for the first time by father and daughter Petrucci, Gian-Luca and Ginevra, who obviously enjoy their superb music making. Ginevra Petrucci already recorded for Brilliant Classics the Flute Quintets by Kuhlau to great critical acclaim.

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San Francisco-based organist Jonathan Dimmock enjoys an international career, a fact made abundantly clear by his truly worldwide vision for repertoire and recording. For his fifth recording with the Loft records family he performs on the glorious organ at the Cathedral of Saint Bavo, the “Grote Kerk” of Haarlem, Netherlands.

A former pupil of Pasquini who also came into contact with Corelli, Georg Muffat -- born in Savoy in 1653 -- was the first example of a truly international composer who brought together elements of the German, French and Italian styles. He was primarily an organist, working in cities such as Paris, Vienna and Prague, and his Apparatus musico-organisticus, to which this release is dedicated, was the largest corpus of organ works published at the time -- an enormously popular volume, to the extent that it was considered among the foremost compilations of its sort in southern Germany.

The Apparatus originally consisted of 12 toccatas, but in a later edition three pieces were added to the set: Ciacona, Passacaglia and Nova Cyclopeias Harmonica. The organist is certainly put to the test, what with the scales, the leaps, double trills and a wide variety of figures that express 'contrasting affections' in the works -- the last of which alludes to the story of Pythagoras, who discovered the foundations of musical tuning by listening to the hammering of a blacksmith on various anvils. Brilliant Classics regular, Adriano Falcioni -- whose previous recordings for the label include Duruflé's Complete Music for Choir and Organ (9264) -- performs this magnum opus with aplomb, revealing the skill of a composer who is credited with being the first musician to introduce the Italian concerto grosso and the French suite to the German-speaking countries.

Other information:
- Recorded 15--17 May 2013.
- Georg Muffat was a cosmopolitan artist. In a time when no work permits were needed he travelled Europe and worked in Strassbourg, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Rome and ultimately in Salzburg, at the court of the Archbishop.
- Like a musical sponge he absorbed every current style of his time in his music, which contains Italian melodiousness, French ornamentations and Germany's severe structures and counterpoint. He published a volume of organ works which became immensely popular among musicians, containing a series of Toccatas, Ciaconas and Passacaglias, works of the highest technical order: the Apparatus Musico-organisticus, a survey of all instrumental and compositional tricks and accomplishments of the time.
- Adriano Falcioni, one of the foremost organists of Italy, offers impressive performances of this complete collection, showing great insight into the styles and performance practice.
- Booklet contains information on the music, artist and the organ.

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Classical Music

Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, a top prizewinner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition, winner of the 1999 Cleveland Int'l Piano Competition, and silver medalist at the 2001 Van Cliburn Int'l Piano Competition, appears regularly at the world's major concert venues. A beloved professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music and a prolific Centaur recording artist, this release marks the second volume in his complete traversal of the piano sonatas of Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837). "... warmth, exquisite taste and...arresting technique." (The LA Times)

If at least some part of Isaac Albéniz' music may justifiably be described as 'salon music', this is not something that the composer would have objected to. Quite the opposite: he was himself very much a man of the salon, especially in his youth in the 1880s, which is when most of the pieces on Miguel Baselga's new disc were composed. It was in the salons of Madrid that he recruited new pupils among the young ladies of the bourgeoisie, performed his latest compositions and, presumably, had a good time in general. And although his greatest work - the four books that make up Iberia - was composed much later, in Paris, Albéniz never disassociated himself from the earlier works: 'There are among them a few things that are not completely worthless', he once remarked, '... there is less musical science, less of the grand idea, but more colour, sunlight, flavour of olives.' It was in the 1880s that a strong influence of Spanish style becomes evident in his music, as a result of the influence of the teacher and composer Felipe Pedrell. Folk music, especially that of Andalusia, and the characteristic idiom of Spanish guitar music make themselves felt in compositions such as Zaragoza and Sevilla, the two pieces published in 1890 as Seconde Suite espagnole. Other works on this disc are of a more 'international' character, for instance Les Saisons, Albéniz' own 'Four Seasons': four miniatures in an almost impressionistic style. Also included is the transcription, published in 2009, of one of the three improvisations that Albéniz recorded on a phonograph roll in 1903, permitting us a unique peek into the composer's creative mind.

Freemasonry had reached Finland via Sweden in the mid-eighteenth century, but was banned after the country became part of Russia in 1809. In early 1922, after Finland had established its independence, a new Masonic lodge was formed - Suomi Lodge No.1. Among its first members was Jean Sibelius, who initially served as the lodge's organist. At lodge meetings, Sibelius would played the harmonium, performing music by Mozart, Beethoven and Handel as well as improvising - at times so enthusiastically that he would have to be called to order by the Grand Master. It was also suggested that Sibelius should compose 'special, genuinely Finnish music for the lodge', but this did not happen until some years later, when he received a proper commission - and a fee - for the task. His Masonic Ritual Music, or Musique religieuse, received its first complete performance on 12th January 1927, but Sibelius returned to the work some twenty years later, adding two movements - Ode to Fraternity and Hymn - which are believed to be his last original compositions. The Masonic Ritual Music centres around a series of songs for tenor and organ, the number, order and texts of which vary between the original manuscripts and the various editions. The organ version on the present disc is the first recording to follow the original song text, according to Sibelius's manuscripts. This CD also includes an arrangement of the score, made by Jaakko Kuusisto at the request of the Finnish Freemasons for a special celebration concert held at the Sibelius Hall in Lahti.

This disc completes the set of CPE Bach’s Fortsetzung Sonatas, Wq51 that began in Volume 26 in this series. Although the sonatas were not published together with the composer's own variants on them, such alternative versions exist in manuscript, and splitting this set of large-scale works over two discs, Miklós Spányi also includes recordings of these varied or embellished versions that may represent the composer's revisions but could equally well have been intended as study material for his students.