This album brings together all of Kodaly's extant pieces for organ, plus works by his contemporaries. They are performed on the Chancel Organ at Peachtree...

This album brings together all of Kodaly's extant pieces for organ, plus works by his contemporaries. They are performed on the Chancel Organ at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, Atlanta by the acclaimed Welsh organist Iain Quinn, professor of organ at Florida State University.

REVIEW:

The disc opens with Ernő Dohnányi’s quite substantial Fantasie in C minor which is listed as a world premiere recording. As is my preference when encountering unknown music, I listen before I read any of the detail, so my surprise as to why this work should sound so unlike this composer’s other music is easily explained, as it is a student work by a fifteen year old. For sure, there is talent and confidence and no little skill but this does sound rather like a test or exercise piece where some Bachian passages jostle with imposing hymn-like melodies and some rather broad-brush Romantic gestures.

Sandwiched between music by familiar composers are a couple of pieces by less well-known names. Bedřich Antonín Wiedermann's Pastorale dorico is another modest, rather unassuming work with a conservative outlook that belies its 1942 composition.

Kodály's set of nine Epigrammák are in fact transcriptions for solo organ made by Gábor Trajtler of songs by Kodály written originally in 1954. These are consciously unaffected and simple pieces. As a sequence they come across as a bit unvaried, but I cannot imagine a better case being made for them than here by Iain Quinn

Just in time the work around which the whole disc was planned arrives. This is Kodály’s quite wonderful Csendes mise. There is an immediate substance and stature to the music here. There is a variety of expressive and musical style that makes for a compelling experience – and this is most definitely a work that benefits from being heard complete.

The disc is completed by another unfamiliar name and work: Miloš Sokola’s Passacaglia quasi toccata na téma B-A-C-H. Dating from 1963 this work makes for an interesting and energetic ‘recessional’ piece for this program

— MusicWeb International