Jan Tolf - Jan Tolf - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The musical language of Bernd Stegmann (*1952) moves in seemingly very different stylistic spheres Elements of old a cappella culture stand next to hammered recitativo passages, big band effects next to minimal music sections, medieval-sounding drone fifths next to palatable Latin jazz harmonies. These heterogeneous building blocks are held together by an all-embracing motoric structure.

Oskar Merikanto (1868-1924) made an enormous contribution to music-making in Finland, and to organ music in particular, as teacher, virtuoso performer and authority on performance practice, reforming the approach to the organ in both church and concert-hall. It was thought that all of his organ music was known and recorded, but recent discoveries have added a number of previously unknown works to his catalogue a striking concert fantasia, an early funeral march, some pedal studies, a vast series of chorale preludes - some of them beautifully crafted miniatures, others only aphoristic ideas - and an organ transcription of a piano piece by Mendelssohn.

As composer, musicologist and critic, Erkki Salmenhaara (1941-2002) was one of the major figures in Finnish musical life in the second half of the twentieth century. His music for organ charts his stylistic evolution, from a modernism influenced by his teacher, György Ligeti, to triadic harmonies spiced with dissonance. Even so, all these works manifest his fondness for the ability of the organ to generate massive and powerful blocks of sound, giving this music a monumental character in keeping with the grand spaces of the buildings in which it is usually heard.