Total music time – 73:17
Sound engineer – Paul Crichton. Microphone – Calrec ST250.
This is a delightful disc to listen to. Full credit to both Keith John for his imaginative registration, interpretation and virtuoso playing, and to Paul Crichton for making it happen.
And look at the programme, folks. No old war horses! Everything new to me, and nothing whatever that I could wish was left out in favour of something else.
What ties it together so well for me is that most of the composers are from the same era. All except for Stanford, born 1852 and Shostakovich, born 1906, were born in the 1870s, so there is continuity, even through the subtly different composing styles.
Keith John says: “The works recorded on this disc come from that fascinating 30/40 year period covering the very end of the 19th century and the earlier decades of this (20th) century. Each work has a different national background and each is an example of a form already established in the Baroque era or before.”
Enough is known of Stanford, Reger and Shostakovich, but who were Franz Schmidt and Oreste Ravanello?
Schmidt was born in Bratislava and died near Vienna. He spent his earlier years as an orchestral cellist and in teaching cello, piano and counterpoint. Most of his compositions come from the last 20 years of his life. The half hour or so length of the Chaconne moves through many musical emotions, and has the organ shouting, declaiming, pleading, whispering and explaining.
Little is known about Ravanello, but from 1893 to 1898 he was organist of San Marco in Venice. The Theme and Variations are superbly put together, and the range of organ moods heard in it are similar to those of Schmidt’s Chaconne.
And so to the organ of Gloucester Cathedral. The instrument was made (even more) famous by the T.V. series ‘The Choir’, and David Briggs’s playing of it therein. It is a truly wonderful organ – and yet …
There seemed to be something missing, and thanks to my fellow writer in these pages, David Bridgeman-Sutton, I now recognise that missing link.
Simply put, this organ, at the time of recording, had neither 32’ stops nor a big quint to boost the bass and produce the commanding, assertive authority expected of an organ in a cavernous, resounding cathedral.
An organ of similar size is that of St Laurens, Alkmaar. For many years, its 22’ quint-like Principal lay unusable, and the 16’ stops provided the bass. But at the last restoration, this stop was reinstated, and what a difference. 64’ resultant tone!
But I digress. As I said at the beginning, this is a rich and rewarding disc to listen to. But it needs a boost in the bass to do it justice. The situation at Gloucester has since been rectified, and it would be marvellous to hear Mr John redoing the same programme.
(Read more about the Gloucester Cathedral organ here)
