Stephen Farr - Keyboard Works - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

A former organist of both York Minster and Guildford Cathedral, Philip Moore ranks among the most significant and prolific of British choral and organ composers of the late-20th and 21st centuries. With a unique and recognizable musical voice, his music is performed regularly around the globe. Organist Stephen Farr, himself a former organist of Guildford Cathedral, explores Moore's considerable and growing body of organ works with this captivating album of music for the instrument containing several premiere recordings and recorded on the impressive Harrison and Harrison organ of St Albans Cathedral.

Highly acclaimed organist Stephen Farr presents an album of organ works by composer Francis Grier Performed on the American-built Dobson Organ of Merton College, Oxford. Grier demonstrates an individual approach to timbre and texture in writing for the organ and shows fascinating traits which are testament to a wide range of musical, and non-musical, influences which extend beyond the bounds of the cathedral world to experiences drawn from his years in India.The album features A Celebration for All Saints, commissioned by Farr and first performed in 2022, de Profundis scored for organ and cello, performed here by Indira Grier, Flourish and Reverie dating from shortly after Grier's return from India in 1990, and Wir haben schwerlich, composed to join works by a variety of composers in the Orgelbuchlein Project.

Organist Stephen Farr continues his survey of works by Johann Sebastian Bach with one of the composer's major collections of organ chorale preludes - the Orgelbuchlein. This unfinished compendium of miniatures, said by Mendelssohn to bear 'most evidently the marks of his genius', contains much variety with each of the forty-six completed works containing a well-defined and individual character. For this recording, Farr performs on the eighteenth-century Trost organ of Waltershausen's stunning Stadtkirche in Germany.