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Contents:
Total Time 53:59 - Recorded at St John's Smith Square with the Sainsbury Organ The Piano Sonata in B flat minor of 1857 aroused understandable admiration within the Altenburg fraternity. One member, the music critic Richard Pohl, later recalled a private performance at which both the gifts and the mortality of the young pianist were poignantly apparent. 'Playing us his sonata, seated in his characteristically bowed form at the piano, sunk in his creation, Reubke forgot everything about him; and we then looked at his pale appearance, at the unnatural shine of his gleaming eyes, heard his heavy breath, and were aware of how wordless fatigue overwhelmed him after such hours of excitement. -We suspected then that he would not be with us long.' [Quoted in Franz Liszt: (Vol.2) The Weimar Years: Alan Walker; Faber & Faber, London, 1989.] Pohl was right: Reubke had already contracted tuberculosis and was, as Alan Walker puts it, staring death in the face. As in all cases of suspected genius extinguished before its time, posterity poses the inevitable question, what has been denied to us? A predictable debt to Liszt notwithstanding, the two formidable works heard here powerfully suggest that our loss has indeed been great, such are their striking individuality, command and intensity of vision. Reubke himself performed both sonatas, presenting the Sonata on the 94th Psalm for the first time at Merseburg Cathedral on 17 June 1857. Although one cannot ignore the influence of Liszt's organ Fantasy and Fugue, 'Ad nos, ad salutarem undam', it is readily apparent that Reubke had attained a fearless and startlingly advanced pedal technique wholly at odds both with Liszt's rudimentary pedal ability (borne out in his writing) and with wider contemporaneous trends: despite the solid and reasonably challenging workmanship of such organ composers as Merkel [1827-85] and Rheinberger [1837 - 1901] the repertoire of this period is notably sparse, and in France pedal writing (not to mention actual pedal boards) had languished in a state of abject abeyance until the pioneering advent of Lemmens [1823 - 81] and Guilmant [1837 - 1911] (For all his undoubted virtues César Franck merits scant acknowledgement in this specific department). Thus Reubke's Organ Sonata stands as a forbidding Everest among the relative foothills of its time, set apart from the neighbouring summit of its Lisztian model by its exacting use of all departments of the instrument and by a sense of pianistic opportunism which only enhances its effectiveness as organ music. Few have been equipped to follow Reubke's daunting precedent of performing both his sonatas, and the opportunity for comprehensive appraisal offered in the present context is as rare as it is timely Page revised Friday May 25 2007 |
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