Organ of St Mary's Ewell. Walton, Rees-Williams, Willan, Gowers and Reger Op73
🎞️ · 19.06.2023 · 23:23:30 ··· Montag ⭐ 0 🎬 0
📺 Jonathan Holmes
🎬 · 19.06.2023 · 23:23:30 ··· Montag
😎 · 03.07.2024 · 15:40:29 ··· MiTTwoch
Recorded on a very hot and humid day so the organ is not in best tune!
Organ Recital Saturday 17th June at 7.30pm at St Mary’s Ewell
Jonathan Holmes plays
Walton ‘Orb and Sceptre’
Healey-Willan ‘Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue’
Rees-Williams Fantasia on ‘Be still for the presence of the Lord'
Gowers ‘Toccata’
Reger Op. 73 ‘Introduction,Variations and Fugue on an original Theme’.
Gowers ‘Toccata’
William Patrick Gowers (5 May 1936 – 30 December 2014) was an English composer, mainly known for his film scores. The Toccata was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain through the Cheltenham Festival and was first performed by Simon Preston in Tewkesbury Abbey on 4 July 1970.
Gower’s wrote 'He asked for a flashy piece with which to end recitals, featuring some Count Basie chords. When he gave a magnificent performance in the Festival Hall, the author of the programme note thought Basie chords must be a misprint; so he changed it to the totally inappropriate Basic chords'
The best way to understand the toccata is to try to beat time, which is harder than usual because this music does not have a regular metre. It is not based on singing, dancing, walking, running, heartbeats (or even machines!) but on a boulder falling down the side of a steep mountain, sometimes spinning round in the air, and between whiles, coming down to earth with a bump. This can be heard in the manuals-only passage starting at 1m 20. Later on, the pedals come in with far slower notes that polarise the manual music into a gradually accelerating series of regular metres. This process can be heard beginning at 2m 14s. From here on the music gets steadily louder and some way through the piece its tempo suddenly drops at a type of climax and then switches backwards and forwards between the original breathless pace and this new, more measured one.
The opening Basie chords return with different figurations 19 times during the piece as points of reference……as ‘the boulder’ motif.
“I have often toiled, drunk, and smoked more than is normal and I will be exhausted earlier than normal,” wrote Max Reger, the prolific German composer, conductor, and pianist. In fact Reger, who suffered from depression and heart trouble, died at the age of 43, in 1916. He had completed 147 opus numbers containing more than 800 pieces, including well over 100 for organ.
None of Reger’s works is wilder, or more passionate, than the Op. 73 Variations. His friend, the virtuoso Karl Straube, had requested a piece without sacred melodies or religious implications, and which could therefore be performed anywhere. Reger delivered him a score of about 35 minutes, his largest organ work to that point. The composer himself said that the variations have a “quite melancholy tone,” but the concluding fugue is brilliant and completes a vast trajectory from sorrow to triumph.
The Introduction, Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme Op 73, in the unusual key of F sharp minor, was written in 1903 when Reger was living in Munich. Much of it is notable for melancholic lyricism, employing a chromaticism that is daring and almost impressionistic.
The Introduction itself falls into five sections: a mysterious, yearning succession of phrases, interspersed with more vigorous writing in a type of recurring form but returning to the brooding style of the opening.
The ‘Original’ theme is marked andante, in a spacious 6/8 metre. The semitonal shifts downwards with their sense of melancholy are significant moments.
The Variations are as follows:
1. Free ornamentation of the theme.
2. Scherzando exchanges.
3. A light and chromatic toccata in D minor.
4. A free harmonic paraphrase of the theme, moving back to F sharp minor.
5. Counterpoint with the theme solo in the pedals.
6. A free fantasia built around the theme of the introduction.
7. A toccata across three manuals, built around motifs from the Introduction in the top and bottom parts.
8. A free chordal toccata using echo effects with the theme in the pedals.
9. A powerful fantasia, building to a formidable climax.
10. A transitional variation recalling the theme; mysterious exchanges lead, momentarily, to a cadence in F sharp major.
11. An idyllic interlude, with translucent textures, in G major, with an ostinato (recurring pattern) in the left hand.
12. Theme in the pedals returning us abruptly to reality; extravagant bravura writing
13. A delicate return to the theme, now in the major, and an exquisitely lingering cadence
The Fugue is relatively short by Regerian standards, and often light and scherzando in style and texture. Nonetheless, by the end it accumulates enough substance to absorb the weight of the preceding material; and the final cadence, resolving into a resplendent F sharp major, is majestic.
from notes by David Goode © 2013
· 19.06.2023 · 23:23:30 ··· Montag
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