Gerd Schaller - Anton Bruckner: Symphonie No. 5 in B-flat Major arranged for organ - Cavaille-Coll - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Bruckner's Fifth is eminently suited to an arrangement for performance on the organ above all because of it's musical texture. In no other Bruckner symphony, for example, does counterpoint play such an important part. I am thinking in particular of the great fugue in the final movement. It really does seem as if many passages of this magnificent work were composed as if with the organ in mind, even though the Fifth is not a piece for organ at all, being in the first place a symphonic work. And yet it lends itself admirably to the extraction of a compositional substrate with no loss of essential content. That cannot be said of all Bruckner's symphonies. Of all his symphonies, in my opinion, the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth are most amenable to an arrangement for organ. Building on the compositional core, it is the orchestral treatment above all that plays a key role. If this is lacking, an arrangement of the work can deprive the work of it's grandeur. That is again at risk if one attempts to copy the orchestra or to transpose certain orchestral effects one-to-one onto the organ. Such an approach is generally unsatisfactory, because organ writing is governed by different rules than those applying to orchestral scoring. It would be fatal to make the organ rival the orchestra. My aim from the start was to avoid imitating the orchestra and to create a work specifically for organ in the manner of an organ symphony. Gerd Schaller

The reason for this transcription was simply that - once again - I had been busy with the Ninth, this time with the intention of arriving at the essence of the work I wanted to understand Bruckner even better, come to grips with the architecture of his symphonic thought. And that led automatically to the idea of making an arrangement for a keyboard instrument, because when you tackle that, you are practically compelled to limit yourself to the essence of a work. And The organ is Bruckner's instrument, which stayed with him all his life. Even as a boy, Bruckner was fascinated by his father's organ playing. Later, during his teacher training, he played the organ himself in small rural churches. After his return to the Augustine abbey of St. Florian he became it's organist, then cathedral organist in Linz and finally the Emperor's organist at the Hofburgkapelle in Vienna - of which he was very proud. The organ kept Bruckner company, then, right up to his death. (Gerd Schaller) Hailed as one of the most significant Bruckner exponents of our time, Gerd Schaller is a freelance conductor in constant demand from leading ensembles, concert halls and opera houses at home and abroad as guest conductor. Along the way, in 2008, he founded Philharmonie Festiva, a symphony orchestra with which he pursues his own ambitious projects. For many years now, Schaller's activities have centered on the music of Anton Bruckner, by whose combination of deep emotion and extreme complexity the conductor has been fascinated since he was a boy. This fascination has resulted in his large-scale project BRUCKNER2024, in which he aims to record all Bruckner's significant works to album from his personal perspective by the composer's bicentenary in 2024.

It took The Feelies six years to create the Good Earth, their follow-up album to Crazy Rhythms. The album was co-produced by Feelies co-captains Glenn Mercer and Bill Million along with REM's Peter Buck who was a Feelies admirer since his days as a record store clerk. The Good Earth was an early on Coyote Records the tag started by Steve Fallon of Maxwell's in Hoboken where the group became one of the club's most popular acts. The Good Earth featured the line-up that continues to this day. The album is an interesting mix of layered acoustic and electric guitars and their signature percussion sound. Bonus material including demos, b-sides and new live recordings will be included via download cards inserted in the LP and CD versions.