GMCD 7191 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under Instrumental/Music for Violin & Organ Reviews ***Sound Clips***	ROMANCE FOR  VIOLIN & ORGAN   Rachel Gough - Violin Rupert Gough  - Organ Chirstchurch Priory: Pipe Organ Some World Première Recordings

Contents:

DDD Total Time = 75:19 / Recorded: Christchurch Priory, England, 24 - 25 February and 1 March 2000

The term "Romance" is often used as a title for short, melodic pieces that are emotional in style and generally in the character of a song. The two pieces entitled "Romance" on this recording are good examples, but the term also has a relevance to many of the other works. A number of the pieces were originally composed as songs, or have choral or vocal connections, and the violin writing is often of a highly expressive and emotional nature. The organ is a most rewarding partner, being varied and colourful, and able to support the sustaining nature of a stringed instrument.

Otto Olsson, born in Stockholm, was a notable composer of the late Romantic period in Scandinavian music. His work was strongly influenced by French organ music - he was himself a great organ virtuoso and influential teacher at the Stockholm Conservatory. The Romance was written in 1910 - displaying idiomatic writing for both instruments, it is based around two yearning themes.

The blind organist Jean Langlais was for nearly fifty years, Organist at the Basilique Sainte-Clotilde in Paris (a post previously held by César Franck), and was a prodigious composer of some 300 organ pieces. In 1954 Langlais wrote "Cinq chants d'amour" Op.86, and these love songs of Ronsard and Baillif were dedicated to the well-known soprano Jeannine Collard. He later re-wrote them for flute or violin and organ in 1974 with a more elaborated instrumental part. In her biography of her husband, Mme. Jacquet-Langlais recounts that the composer preferred the instrumental version. Like so much of Langlais’ music, these essentially simple melodies are built on the modality of Gregorian chant enhanced by rich polymodal harmonies.

The opera Thaïs, written by another prolific Parisian composer, Jules Massenet, was first performed in 1894. The Méditation from Act 2 is a beautiful interlude for solo violin and orchestra that has become popular in transcription. The music accompanies the moment of the religious conversion of Thaïs, a beautiful and notorious courtesan of Alexandria.

Michel Boulnois, like Massenet, attended the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied organ with Marcel Dupré and composition with Nadia Boulanger and Henri Busser. Most of his works are for organ, including an Organ Symphony (1949). His Élégie for violin and organ was published in 1979 and is built around two contrasting themes. A contemporary of Langlais and Messiaen, Boulnois’ musical language is richly chromatic and colourful. The piece is dedicated to the violinist Gil Graven, as is Lovreglio’s Arioso. Eleuthère Lovreglio was born in Naples and worked as a composer and violinist. The music of Ravel and Debussy drew him to Paris where he pursued a very successful career as a composer. Arioso was one of his last works written in 1969.

A distinguished British post-war composer and lecturer, Kenneth Leighton wrote Fantasy on a Chorale (Es ist genug) in 1979 in response to a commission from the American violinist Jean Harman who gave its first performed in Washington D. C. in May 1980. Of this work Leighton wrote:

The Chorale Es ist genug is by the 17th Century composer J. G. Ahle and was made famous by J. S. Bach in his Cantata 60 (O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort). Bach's setting was in turn quoted by Berg in his Violin Concerto. Indeed the first phrase of the tune sounds 20th century: four notes ascending by whole tones and thus outlining the tritone, the most unstable and ambiguous of intervals. The tritone plays an important part, both melodically and harmonically, in the development of the Fantasy which is in one movement but divided into five sections based on the five different phrases of the Chorale. The music tries to illuminate the words of the Chorale and the sections are as follows:

I. Es ist genug
II. Herr, wenn es dir gefällt
III. So spanne mich doch aus
IV. Ich fahre sicher hin mit Frieden
V. Es ist genug

It is enough: Lord, if it thou does please,
do thus unyoke me now. My Jesus comes:
so then good night, O World! I go toward Heaven's home: secure in peace I journey thither:
my great distress is left behind me.
It is enough, it is enough.

The London-based organist and composer William Lloyd Webber had a gift for writing lyrical, concisely constructed instrumental pieces that often resemble songs without words. In the case of Benedictus it is certainly a love song as it was written for Lloyd Webber and his violinist wife, Jean, to play at their wedding service in 1942. The broadly sweeping melodic lines of the two instruments are united in a feast of sumptuous harmony.

 Camille Saint-Saëns was for many years Organist of La Madeleine in Paris, but a substantial inheritance in 1876 allowed him to dedicate all his time to composition. Very much a traditionalist, Saint-Saëns’ wrote in a Classical simplicity which is evident even in one of his last compositions, the Prière. Originally scored for cello and organ in 1919, it was rearranged by the composer the following year for violin and organ.

Vocalise is the last of Fourteen Songs, Op. 34, written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1912. Originally for soprano and piano (and later orchestrated by the composer) the piece has become popular in transcriptions for a variety of different instruments.

During his relatively short lifetime, Max Reger produced a large output of compositions in all genres and was also active internationally as a conductor and pianist. A spiritual descendant of Brahms, he is perhaps chiefly recognised for his monumental contrapuntal style. The Romanze of 1902, in contrast to many of his best-known organ works, is a simple and melodic piece.

The contemporary Swiss composer Carl Rütti studied the violin as a boy, and the organ at both the Zurich Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music. Whilst in London he was heavily influenced by the English choral tradition and has achieved a great deal of success with his choral commissions. Of the Pavane, the composer writes:

The Pavane - a gentle dance from Spain – was the introductory music to a social occasion at court. The guests met and greeted each other while dancing it. In my Pavane for violin and organ, written in 1997, the meeting in question is with death. The first section, full of anxiety and pain, dies away and leads into a very fast second section which is a bird's-eye-view of a whole life passing by again. In the third section the fast rhythms played by the violin come together with the slow theme of the first section played on the organ, symbolising the final meeting with God. This work was commissioned by Duo Antiqua (Petronella Dittmer and Richard Coulson) and was written in the memory of my father-in-law.

Page revised 27.06.03