Timothy Olsen - Organ Recital [CD]

Maurice Duruflé's early musical training came as a choir boy in Rouen. He studied with and later became the assistant of Charles Tournemire at Ste Clothilde's in Paris, going on to further study with Louis Vierne. In 1927 he was appointed organist at St Etienne-du-Mont where he remained the rest of his life. In 1942 he became Marcel Dupré's assistant at the Paris Conservatoire. Duruflé was very critical of his own compositions, thus only publishing ten works in his lifetime. The Scherzo, one of four organ pieces, was his first published work. Written in 1924 it is dedicated to Tournemire. The piece combines the typical playfulness of a scherzo with beautifully shaped melodies and lush harmonies. With a musical style often characterized as a synthesis of romantic, chromatic tonal language and more classical, traditional forms, Max Reger bridges the old to the new. He had an affinity with Bach's music, particularly the keyboard works, and his study of Bach's keyboard works in the 1890s culminated in the composition of several of his large-scale chorale fantasies and other free works. The Introduction and Passacaglia opens with a fantasy in three distinct sections, the middle one of which is contrapuntal in nature and, in contrast, has softer dynamics, lighter texture, and less gravity. The Passacaglia, following the example of Bach, has a repeated eight-bar bass-line, over which appears a series of variations, until the final climax is reached, stated in the parallel key of D major. The English-born organist Edwin Lemare held positions in several churches and municipalities in England from 1882 to 1902, and in America from 1902 to 1929. He did much towards raising the organ to the stature of a symphony orchestra as a concert instrument. To this end he transcribed a wealth of orchestral music for the organ, including the present arrangement of several of the themes from Bizet's opera, Carmen, into a quasi-fantasia. The prominent themes used are Carmen's Habanera, the Toreador's theme, and Carmen's fate theme.