GMCD 7180 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under Instrumental/Music for Organ Reviews ***Sound Clips***	MARCEL DUPRÉ Volume 7 Intégrale des œuvres pour orgue Complete Organ Works Sämtliche Orgelwerke   Jeremy Filsell - Organ   www.jeremyfilsell.com

Contents:

DDD Total Time = 56:38 Recorded at St. Boniface Episcopal Church, Sarasota, Florida, USA - September 1998

Variations sur Il est né le Divin EnfantComposed - like the delightful Epithalame (Vol. 5 of this series) - as a personal gift for Dupré’s daughter Marguerite, this little piece was not originally intended for publication. After her marriage in 1948, Marguerite moved to a small village where she was enlisted as organist of the local church. For her first Christmas in the village, she asked her father to write an Offertory for Midnight Mass, in the style of Daquin and the 18th century French noëlistes. Dupré replied with this set of four miniature variations on a well-known carol, all precisely conceived and registered for the church’s modest instrument (12 stops and two manuals, one of which was of limited 3-octave compass). The four pages of manuscript were brought to light by the late Graham Steed, and the piece was published in The American Organist in December 1996, almost fifty years after it was written.

Elévation, Op 2
Elévation pour orgue ou harmonium by Marcel Dupré, Suppléant de Ch. M. Widor au grand orgue de St. Sulpice: Dupré’s first published composition was commissioned by the Abbé Joubert for his multi-volume liturgical anthology Les Maîtres Contemporains de l’Orgue. The date of publication is 1913, but the piece was probably written some time earlier; in this charming, elegant, but rather anonymous music there is certainly no sign of the revolutionary young composer of the Three Preludes & Fugues, Op. 7 (1912).

Scherzo, Op 16
Between 1916 and 1920 Dupré combined his post as Widor’s Assistant with a temporary appointment as acting organist of Notre-Dame; the cathedral’s own titulaire, Dupré’s friend and mentor Louis Vierne, was absent throughout these four years, seeking treatment for his ailing eyesight. Dupré’s sensational improvisations in the cavernous Gothic setting of Notre-Dame attracted a good deal of attention, and their spirit is reflected in his two organ compositions from this period, the Vesper Antiphons, Op.18 and the Scherzo, Op.16. The Scherzo is a relentless moto perpetuo, with a thread of staccato semiquaver figuration running throughout every bar of its 13 pages. Set against the semiquavers is a short melodic motif which is first heard in dialogue between right hand and pedal, occasionally erupting into a more emphatic display, and twice expanded into a more long-breathed melodic line which soars up the keyboard and down again, briefly recalling (unusually for Dupré) the style of Vierne himself. This rarely-heard tour-de-force provides a vivid illustration of the dynamism of Dupré’s inspiration as he approached the dawn of his international career.

Trois Elévations, Op 32
During the two decades between the wars Dupré rapidly reached the summit of his profession as an international performing artist and teacher. But he was content to remain as Assistant Organist at Saint-Sulpice until 1934, when Widor retired at the age of 89, and Dupré at last succeeded him as Organiste Titulaire. During the 1930s he was too busy with other projects to devote much time to organ composition, but his new status is reflected in two short liturgical publications from 1935/6, the exquisite Angélus (Volume 5) and this set of Three Elevations. The first, in E major, is registered for flutes, with slow chords in the right hand accompanied by the syncopated bell-like repetitions of a dominant pedal in the left. The second Élévation in D minor presents a modal melody in canon between right and left hands, while the third, in G major, is harmonically more adventurous, with a melodic motif on a pedal flute, accompanied by a soft procession of mysterious, constantly shifting chords.

Sept Pièces, Op 27
After the dissonance and complexity of the Deuxième Symphonie, Op.26 (Volume 6), Dupré’s next major concert work appears to represent a deliberate retreat into a less challenging and more audience-friendly world. Like Vierne’s four books of Pièces de Fantaisie (1926/7), which clearly provided a model, Dupré’s set of Seven Pieces (1930) comprises a varied selection of short concert works, dedicated to musicians whom he had met on his British and American tours, and combining poetry, wit and virtuosity in an engaging blend.

The Souvenir is dedicated to the memory of the Canadian virtuoso Lynnwood Farnham (1885-1930), who was a dedicated champion of contemporary French music. When Dupré made his first visit to America in 1921, Farnham greeted him, to his complete amazement, with a memorised performance of his recently-published Prelude & Fugue in G minor, and they soon became firm friends. This nostalgic Souvenir unfolds in a gentle Cantabile on single 8ft stops.

The next two pieces are dedicated to organ builders. Firstly, a majestic piece of ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ for the Englishman Henry Willis, builder of the Grand Organ in Westminster Cathedral. Dupré gave many recitals on this notable new instrument, and his Marche perhaps recalls its inauguration on 2nd July 1922, when he played Widor’s equally grandiose Marche Pontificale. The colourful Pastorale is dedicated to the American organ-builder Ernest Skinner, whose work Dupré greatly admired. Its opening section alternates a rustic solo for the Clarinet in the tenor register with a more flowing theme first heard on Voix Celeste and then on a solo Harmonic Flute. The reprise of the Clarinet theme is varied by a curiously hollow texture with the hands playing in unison three octaves apart, against a moving pedal line, and after further development of both ideas the music comes to rest with a final flourish on the flute.

No French collection of this kind would be complete without a Carillon, but Dupré comes up with a characteristically personal reinterpretation of this conventional genre. Dedicated to the American organist Frederick C. Mayer, of West Point, his Carillon is based on the chime of the bells at the Immaculate Conception in Elbeuf, where he had spent many childhood Sundays in the company of his father, who was organist of the church at the time. The theme is sketched in the jangling fourths of the toccata figuration that runs right through the piece, punctuated by leaping octave figures, which eventually set up an ostinato rhythm on the pedals to herald the arrival of the thunderous final peal.

A typical Dupré tour-de-force, the captivating Canon is dedicated to his American agent Alexander Russell. The lightly tripping, staccato theme is played in canon between the flutes of the right hand and the Clarinet of the tenor, at the bizarre interval of a major seventh, and the deceptive complexity of the contrapuntal texture is further increased at the reprise by the addition of a new counter-melody in the bass, in dancing staccato quavers.

Dedicated to Dupré’s English champion and translator John Stuart Archer, the evocative Légende has a hypnotic, archaic atmosphere, the regular phrases of its Oboe melody (echoed here and there by a piquant mutation combination) and the repeated chromatic pattern of the accompaniment - all in an elusive 5/4 metre - combining to create an ostinato-like effect. The equally original second theme consists of a rising arpeggio figure on the strings, building up in a kind of triple canon. At the end, the coda inverts the first theme, first on a flute and then on an Oboe, finally coming to rest on a bare open fifth.

The Final that ends the Sept Pièces is the most powerful of Dupré’s shorter works, recapturing the fire of the Deuxième Symphonie, but in even more concentrated form. It is dedicated to his closest American friend, the Bach scholar Albert Riemenschneider; as a tribute to Riemenschneider, Dupré conceals the BACH motif within the insistent chromatic semiquaver figuration that goads the piece along with unrelenting intensity. There are three themes - the scale figure that is hammered out in full chords in the first line, the BACH semiquavers, and the march that breaks out on the second page, but they seem to be fused together by the blazing energy of the music; a softer central interlude barely reduces the tension, and the Final soon resumes its headlong rampage towards a tempestuous conclusion.

Page revised Friday May 27 2007