Roberto Marini - Durufle: Complete Organ Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The technical challenging of balancing a choir singing at full volume and a guitar, renowned for it's gentle sound, has tended to discourage composers from pairing these resources. Handled sensitively, however, the combination yields a seductive sound-world, full of mystery and imagination, tending in this trio of works to evoke a reassuring feeling of familiarity there is balance, a sense of form, awareness, and respect for a past that is renewed while it nourishes the present. At the peak of his maturity in 1959 and in a burst of creativity, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco set to music seven poems by Federico García Lorca as a cycle, Romancero Gitano Op.152. The vocal writing is limpid, capturing the colours and contrasts of Lorca's text, whether it is representing the placid flow of three rivers (Baladilla de los Tres Rios) with an incessant stream of semiquavers, or depicting Carmen's dance through the streets of Seville with an elegant and slightly grotesque InchTempo di SeguidillaInch (Baile). Everywhere, what shines through, to quote the composer, is a sense 'of the Spanish lands the parched Castile, the pale olive groves, the scent of the orange orchards in Andalusia and, along the coast, the sea which breaks at the shore with vibrations, almost, of a guitar.' Receiving their first recordings here are Nulla Sors Longa Est by Nicola Jappelli (b.1975) and Materna by Nicola Campogrande (b.1969). Jappelli's chosen text was written by the Roman philosopher Seneca, and addresses the concept of happiness, ending with a bitter reflection on human frailty. Campogrande's piece has a more positive outlook, celebrating motherhood in a commission from the guitarist on this recording, Nicolò Spera, to mark the birth of his daughter. Campogrande has set four texts - also in Latin - by the contemporary poet Marco Vacchetti, who was in turn inspired by Renaissance-era nativities p

Album Tracks 1. Requiem, for 2 Solo Voices, Chorus, Organ & Orchestra, Op. 48 Introitus Et Kyrie 2. Requiem, for 2 Solo Voices, Chorus, Organ & Orchestra, Op. 48 Offertorium 3. Requiem, for 2 Solo Voices, Chorus, Organ & Orchestra, Op. 48 Sanctus 4. Requiem, for 2 Solo Voices, Chorus, Organ & Orchestra, Op. 48 Pie Jesu 5. Requiem, for 2 Solo Voices, Chorus, Organ & Orchestra, Op. 48 Agnus Dei 6. Requiem, for 2 Solo Voices, Chorus, Organ & Orchestra, Op. 48 Libera Me 7. Requiem, for 2 Solo Voices, Chorus, Organ & Orchestra, Op. 48 In Paradisum 8. Chichester Psalms, for Boy Soloist, Chorus & Orchestra No. 1. Urah, Haneval! 9. Chichester Psalms, for Boy Soloist, Chorus & Orchestra No. 2. Adonai Roi 10. Chichester Psalms, for Boy Soloist, Chorus & Orchestra No. 3. Prelude Adonai, Adonai

The most comprehensive survey ever made of Reger's organ music, on a range of superb Austrian, German and Swiss instruments a fitting tribute to the composer on the 150th anniversary of his birth. With just under 30 of 146 opus-numbered works and 15 further pieces and collections, organ music represents an impressive proportion of Max Reger's oeuvre, comparable to his chamber and piano music, but far more influential in shaping his image. Around 1900, Reger achieved his breakthrough as a controversial composer with his organ works. Organ works kept interest in him alive in times of oblivion and won him lasting international renown. Roberto Marini's feat of performing Reger's entire output for organ in Italy within a single year (2002) was followed in 2011-13 by this remarkable achievement on record. On the basis of authoritative new critical editions compiled by the Max Reger Institute, Marini recorded the works on historical instruments of Reger's time, which with their orchestral richness of colour and dynamic possibilities correspond to the soundworld of an epoch that believed in progress in every dimension and embodied a kind of striving heroism as an attitude to both life and art. As a teenage student, Reger demonstrated a comprehensive practical knowledge of Bach's organ music which naturally fed into his own early compositions such as the Organ Suite Op.16. In his 20s, Reger adapted and enlarged the chorale fantasia into larger-scale forms filled with intense Romantic expression and chromatic harmony. All the same, the Prelude and Fugue in C minor op. 29 (1898), dedicated to Richard Strauss, demonstrates that modern writing and expressive content are perfectly compatible with Baroque forms. In the Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H op. 46 (1900), he ventures to the extreme limits of harmonic and technical possibilities on the Romantic organ. There are richly evocati