Twentieth-Century Organ Music

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

Release Date: 1st Dec 2017
Catalogue No: ELQ4824925
Label: Eloquence
Length: 1 hour 59 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Hindemith: Organ Sonata No. 1 (1937)

Work length16:25

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1970-11
Recording Venue: unknown, London

1. Mässig schnell - 2. Sehr langsam

Track length6:53

3. Phantasie

Track length5:29

4. Ruhig bewegt

Track length4:03

Hindemith: Organ Sonata No. 2 (1937)

Work length9:11

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1970-11
Recording Venue: unknown, London

1. Lebhaft

Track length3:28

2. Ruhig bewegt

Track length3:02

3. Fuge

Track length2:41

Hindemith: Organ Sonata No. 3: über alte Volkslieder (1940)

Work length9:07

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1970-11
Recording Venue: unknown, London

1. 'Ach Gott, wem soll ich's klagen'

Track length3:51

2. 'Wach auf, mein Hort'

Track length2:58

3. 'So wünsch ich dir'

Track length2:18

Davies, Peter Maxwell: O magnum mysterium

Work length18:01

Simon Preston (organ)
Cirencester Grammar School Choir, Cirencester Grammar School Orchestra
Peter Maxwell Davies
Recorded: 1962-03
Recording Venue: Bingham Hall, Cirencester

1. Carol 1

Track length1:33

2. Carol 2

Track length3:56

3. Sonata 1

Track length1:20

4. Carol 3

Track length2:30

5. Carol 4

Track length1:24

6. Sonata 2

Track length4:14

7. Carol 5

Track length1:31

8. Carol 6

Track length1:33

Davies, Peter Maxwell: Fantasia on 'O Magnum Mysterium'

Work length14:53

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1963-03
Recording Venue: Royal Festival Hall, London

Elgar: Organ Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 28

Work length26:27

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1967-01
Recording Venue: Colston Hall, Bristol

1. Allegro maestoso

Track length9:09

2. Allegretto

Track length4:21

3. Andante espressivo

Track length5:52

4. Presto (comodo)

Track length7:05

Leighton: Paean

Work length4:23

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1967-01
Recording Venue: Colston Hall, Bristol

Bridge: Adagio in E major (No 2 of Three Pieces, H63)

Work length5:57

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1967-01
Recording Venue: Colston Hall, Bristol

Howells: Three Rhapsodies, Op. 17 (1915-18)

Work length7:20

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1967-01
Recording Venue: Colston Hall, Bristol

No. 3

Track length7:20

Tippett: Prelude to Monteverdi's Vespers

Work length3:35

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1967-01
Recording Venue: Colston Hall, Bristol

Britten: Prelude & Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria

Work length4:36

Simon Preston (organ)
Recorded: 1967-01
Recording Venue: Colston Hall, Bristol

About
Explore

About

Three original Argo albums demonstrating the vitality and variety of 20th-century organ music, newly remastered and compiled together for the first time in a 2CD set, with new booklet notes on the music and a tribute to Simon Preston.

Simon Preston had only left King’s College, Cambridge, (where he had been organ scholar) the previous summer, when he was invited in the spring of 1963 to Cirencester in Gloucestershire. The music at the town’s grammar school was now under the charge of Peter Maxwell Davies, who would make a name for himself as a firebrand in postwar English music during the 1960s, just as Preston would take charge of several of the country’s major choral institutions and raise them to new heights of professionalism and excellence. He recorded a large-scale fantasia based on the medieval plainchant O magnum mysterium, which was preceded by several, much simpler movements written by Maxwell Davies for his teenage charges. The piece and the project was a groundbreaking piece of music education, and the fantasia itself showed the composer at his most virtuosic in terms of commanding long-range structures. There have been very few recordings since, and this premiere has lost none of its impact.

Also issued here for the first time on international release are the three sonatas by Paul Hindemith, which Preston recorded at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Islington. Written between 1937 and 1940, these have remained staples of the organ’s modern repertoire – not surprisingly, given their mastery of Bachian counterpoint.

The second CD is filled with a recital of English organ music recorded by Preston at the organ of Colston Hall, Bristol, in January 1967. This conspectus sets the spacious, German-influenced Sonata of Sir Edward Elgar alongside the sharper harmonic bite of works by Kenneth Leighton, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten: all three in their different ways, like Maxwell Davies, looking back to much older music for the catalyst of inspiration.

Twentieth-Century Organ Music

2 CDs

Contents

Download queue