St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Jongen. Franck. Widor. Saint-Saëns. Ravel. Escaich. Langlais


Music for organ and piano
Joseph Jongen. Hymne
Cèsar Franck. Prelude, Fugue and Variation
Charles-Marie Widor. Three Duos: Allegretto, Serenada and Tema con variazioni
Camille Saint-Saëns. Four Duos: Cavatina, Scherzo, Capriccio and Fantasia and Fugue
Maurice Ravel. Adagio from the Piano Concerto in G Major (transcription for piano and organ)
Thierry Escaich. Choral’s Dream
Jean Langlais. Diptique

 

The character of the Concert Hall’s organ

About the Concert Hall’s organ on the Mariinsky Media website

 

The name of 19th–20th century Belgian composer Joseph Jongen (1873–1953), a professor at the Brussels Conservatoire whose style stands out for its remarkable eclecticism, is almost unknown in Russia. Nevertheless, he wrote several symphonies, including the symphony for orchestra and organ Impressions d’Ardennes, 1913, the symphonic poem Lalla Rookh (1904), Triptych (three orchestral suites, 1935), three symphonic pieces (1951), Fantaisie sur deux Noëls populaires wallons (1902), overtures and other pieces including chamber, piano and organ works such as the Hymne pour Orgue et Orchestre, Op. 78 (1924) and orchestral concerti for the violin (1899), cello (1900), piano (1943) and harp (1944).

 

Prelude, Fugue and Variation is in an anthology which César Franck entitled Six pièces, Op. 20 (1858–1863). Like Schumann’s Novelettes or Fantasiestücke, his works include independent and complete pieces in their own right. Work on this anthology coincided with the time when the composer began working at the Église Sainte-Clotilde. At this time, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s firm was building a new organ for the church, and this was inaugurated in 1859. Because of this, this organ was one of Franck’s favourite instruments. By then it already had all of the features typical of a Cavaillé-Coll organ: special flute registers, a strengthened reed section which the composer used in all of his finales to impart unity to the sound palette and “subtle” registers with “flickering timbres”. For his Prelude, Fugue and Variation Franck chose the model of the baroque triptych (Dietrich Buxtehude’s Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne or Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue). Moreover, the baroque fantaisie becomes a romantic ballade. Instead of a toccata-like, bravura opening which must be present in a triptych, Franck wrote a Prelude in the spirit of Chopin. The Fugue contrasts with the prelude thanks to its active, lively character. The Variation almost literally “repeats” the prelude. Its mood is imbued with humility and peace.

 

Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937) is known mainly for his organ music. Throughout his entire life he performed at services at the Église Saint-Sulpice, which is home to one of the finest organs in France. As a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, Widor taught the organ to Charles Tournemire and Louis Vierne and composition to Marcel Dupré, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Edgard Varèse and Nadia Boulanger. He assisted Albert Schweitzer in his work on a book about the organ music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Inspired by his pupil César Franck, he wrote ten symphonies for organ, thus creating a new genre in music; moreover, he wrote many works that vary in form. Like Camille Saint-Saëns, he outlived his own generation, in his twilight years becoming certain that most of his works had lost their popularity. But today they rouse interest once more, and hardly any evening of organ music fails to include some of Charles-Marie Widor’s music.

 

Jean Langlais (1907–1991) was an outstanding 20th century French organist. Langlais held the post of parish organist at Paris’ famed Église Sainte-Clotilde, where César Franck and Charles Tournemire had worked before him. Langlais had a profound love for the instrument, which dates back to the time of César Franck and Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, and he composed all of his own organ works for it.
Langlais wrote two hundred and fifty-four works including over one hundred for solo organ. The composer worked in various genres and styles. But music for organ was especially dear to him. Like his close friend Olivier Messiaen, Langlais saw composing works for the organ as his religious mission. “I am a Breton musician of the Catholic faith,” Langlais was wont to say. Both composers interpreted composing for the organ as their individual comments on the Holy Scriptures.
Langlais was no innovator, and unlike César Franck and Louis Vierne he did not found a school with numerous pupils and adherents. He stood alone, yet at the same time he formed an individual and always recognisable style of composition which stands out for its vivid virtuoso technique and improvisational character. Langlais was drawn by the concert potential of the organ, its orchestral sound and the richness of its timbre potential. In memory of the composer, Bernard de Castelbajac said: “Music has lost her Lord with Jean Langlais.”

 

The two Piano Concerti by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) are among the most significant works in the genre. First turning to the concerto genre as late in his artistic career as 1929-1931, Ravel was drawn by the search for various possible resolutions within one and the same genre. He worked on both concerti at the same time. Ravel found this to be particularly interesting.
Returning home from the USA, Ravel had the idea of writing a concert piece on Basque themes, this image frequently appearing in his thoughts and his musical works. It is important to point out the composer’s constantly changing plans with regard to the composition of his emergent concerto. It is know, for example, that at first he proposed to complete the concerto with pianissimo and trills, while in fact it ends with forte and octaves. The composer himself said of his First Concerto in G Major that “This is a concerto in the true meaning of the word, in the spirit of the concerti by Mozart or Saint-Saëns.” According to Ravel, the music in a work of this genre “may be merry and dazzling; but it is not a necessity that it must claim depth or drama.”
The music of the second section of the concerto, Adagio, enchants us with its somewhat cool beauty. The inspired melody conjures up associations with baroque examples of Bach’s music (although the composer indicated another “model” – that of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet). At the same time, the music in this section is an example of rare economy of means, and it would appear that there is nothing of the concerto in it – the style is so miserly and deviations from the slow development of the music are rare.

 

An internationally acclaimed composer, organist and master of improvisation, Frenchman Thierry Escaich (1965) is one of the present day’s most outstanding musicians. His friendship with Olivier Messiaen played an extremely important role in his development as a musician. Messiaen, having listened to the young musician, bid him an artistic farewell with the words “work as an organist, work as an improviser, and, again, work as a composer.” “Messiaen told me that his masses were a synthesis of his improvisations. He would write down whatever came into his head during a church service. On the other hand, he found it easy to move from the organ – a space of manuals – to orchestral space,” Thierry Escaich has remarked. Escaich mainly composes for the organ (solo compositions, chamber music and concerti including the two La Barque solaire concerti for organ and orchestra), but he is open to all genres and forms, and is continuously investigating the realm of sound. His style can be seen clearly in such works as Choral’s Dream (2003) for piano and organ, Scènes de bal for string quartet and in larger-scale orchestral compositions – Chaconne (2000), Vertiges de la croix (2004), Les Nuits hallucinées for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (2004) and the oratorio Le Dernier Évangile for double chorus, organ and orchestra (1999). He also recently completed a violin concerto which is dedicated to David Grimal, and he is currently writing a clarinet concerto for Paul Meyer and a ballet for New York City Ballet. Love of cinema has brought Thierry Escaich to compose music for silent films. In 1999 he received a commission from the Louvre to compose the musical accompaniment for Frank Borzage’s film L’Heure suprême.

 

Camille Saint-Saëns’ organ legacy includes three fantaisies, three Rhapsodies sur des cantiques bretons, six preludes and fugues, seven improvisations, several independent works, orchestral music featuring the organ and duets for piano and organ. Camille Saint-Saëns’ interest in the traditions of German polyphony of the 17th and 18th centuries provided the motivation to compose the fantaisies and fugues. As in the series of Johann Sebastian Bach and Dietrich Buxtehude, the fantaisie and the fugue are con affetto pieces that are consistently in a shared imagistic key. Yet at the same time the romantic expression inherent in Saint-Saëns’ music is reflected in the fantasy character of the former.
At times one can note the close interaction between organ and piano music in the composer’s works. The organ music is enriched with concert piano techniques such as those in Liszt’s music: the octave technique, chord repetitions and varied arpeggios are interspersed in his compositions for organ. And in his works for piano one can see episodes that recreate the organ technique. The four duets and organ and piano duets synthesise Saint-Saëns’ organ and piano styles in a multifaceted manner.

Anna Kolenkova
Age category 6+

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