PROGRAMME NOTES
for Jane Paker-Smith @CUBE, Shiroishi, 2 July 2000



PASSACAGLIA IN C MINOR BWV 582
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

This noble Passacaglia in C minor, one of the few organ works for which we have an autograph manuscript, represents one of the high points of J. S. Bach's output, presenting fearful difficulties to the performer. The Passacaglia or Chaconne originated in Spain as a stately dance in triple time, but by Bach's time it had developed into the purely instrumental form that we know today - a set of variations on a theme which was repeated in each variation; usually, but not always, in the bass part, and in the same key, here C minor. The theme for a passacaglia was traditionally just four bars long, but Bach doubles this to eight, thus greatly magnifying the scale of the work. The first half of this theme is in fact borrowed from a Trio en Passacaille by the earlier French composer and organist André Raison, but in Bach's hands this little acorn grows into a mighty oak such as the Frenchman could never have conceived. All previous ground-bass works had been essentially static, relying on repetition for their effect but with Bach we find for the first time a sense of progression and tension; here, as so often, he uses the foundations laid by his predecessors to create something quite new. Such is the amazing fertility of his invention, that after the magnificent edifice of twenty variations he starts again with a long double fugue on the same theme, bringing the whole work to a climax of almost symphonic proportions.


FUNÉRAILLES
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) transcribed by Nicolas Kynaston

Franz Liszt was born in October 1811 at Raiding in Austria, on the estate of Prince Esterhazy and received his first musical training from his father. He gave his first concert at the age of eleven and was then taken to Vienna where he studied with Czerny and Salieri. Thus began a spectacular international career: by the time he was thirty years old he had met Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, Paganini and Chopin, toured France and Switzerland, played to King George IV at Windsor Castle, had an opera performed in Paris, fallen in love with one of his pupils, eloped and had three children with a countess! On top of all this, Liszt experienced a calling to the priesthood, which was not realised until 1865 when he received minor orders in the Roman Catholic Church and became an Abbé. Although first and foremost a pianist, Liszt showed considerable ability as an organist. He was an astounding improviser and it is known that he played the organ a lot in middle and later life and on visits to Paris could even be found in the organ loft at St. Sulpice with Widor.
In 1834, Liszt wrote a short piece entitled Harmonies poetiques et religieuses became the starting point for a set of eight pieces collectively given the same title and written between 1845 and 1852. Funérailles is the seventh piece of this set and is a heroic lament for those killed in the 1848-9 Hungarian Revolution. Unlike the diabolic sparkle of many of his works, Funérailles takes us into a world of sombre magnificence. In it Liszt conjures up the hoofbeats of the Polish cavalry he once heard in the central episode of Chopin's A flat Polonaise, yet maintained throughout is a strong sense of his own identity. It is also an ode to Chopin whose death in 1849 left Liszt with both a sense of loss and a certain relief. He was finally free of Chopin's sarcasm!


VALSE MIGNONNE, Op. 142 No. 2
Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

Karg-Elert succeeded Max Reger as composition Professor at the Leipzig Conservatorium in 1919, but his eccentric, colourful character made him something of an outsider in the straight-laced world of German music. Years earlier he had been a student there under Jadassohn and Reinecke, two very conservative teachers. He was a natural harmonist and was encouraged to compose by Grieg. A prolific composer in many media, Karg-Elert is best remembered for his organ music, particularly in Britain, where this branch of his work was long esteemed.
This delightful little waltz (1930) is one of a set of pieces of which the composer wrote: "These things are quite exceptional and not in my true style, but I had played one day on a fabulous cinema organ, and was almost drunk with it. In this intoxication I wrote these pieces, which sound astonishingly effective. May Saint Cecilia forgive my sins..."


SONATA EROICA, OP. 94
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)

Joseph Jongen saw the possibilities of developing Belgian organ music in much the same way as Widor had developed that of France. His total output for organ was less spectacular than that of Widor and less wide-ranging than Guilmant and Vierne, but it was in no way inferior in either quality or originality of thought. Born in Liège in 1873, he entered the Conservatoire there and crowned his studies by winning the much coveted Grand Prix de Rome when he was twenty-four. His travels took him to Germany, Italy and France and it was the active musical life in Paris that affected his musical personality most of all. Franck and Debussy were particularly strong influences - especially Franck's mastery of the symphonic form.
The Sonata Eroica was published in 1932 and is the composer's most important solo work for the instrument. In one continuos movement, it has a common link with Reubke's Sonata on the 94^th Psalm and Liszt's Fantasia and Fugue on 'Ad nos, ad salutarem undam'. The three sections are an opening Fantasia, Theme and Variations and a fugal Finale.


- - - - - - - - - - - - Intermission - - - - - - - - - - - -


MARS, THE BRINGER OF WAR (THE PLANETS, OP. 32)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934) transcribed by Peter Sykes

Gustav Theodore Holst was born in Cheltenham, England. He composed as soon as he could hold a pen and played various instruments as fast as they came his way. He began professional life as a village organist and conductor of village choral societies, and then, at the age of nineteen, went to the Royal College of Music where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford.
During the 1910's, Holst was undoubtedly going through a period similar to a midlife crisis. His first large scale work, an opera called Sita, failed to win a cash prize at a Ricordi composition competition and his other large works were premiered without success. But when The Planets erupted into the rather conservative British musical world after the First World War, it immediately - despite its modernity and its many echoes of Stravinsky and Schoenberg - struck a popular chord. Vividly characterised and bursting with melodic, rhythmic and orchestral invention, this revolutionary work opened up a new horizon for British music.
It was the writer Clifford Bax (brother of Arnold Bax, the composer) who introduced Holst to the concepts of astrology in 1913. Soon afterwards, Holst wrote to a friend: "I only study things that suggest music to me. That is why I worried at Sanskrit. Then recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely..." He began work on the suite in the summer of 1914, but because he also taught at St. Paul's Girls School in London, composing was very much limited to weekends and holidays. The whole work gradually took shape over a period of two years.
Holst seemed to consider The Planets a progression of life. Mars perhaps serves as a rocky and tormenting beginning. In fact, this movement has been called the most devastating piece ever written!


SCHERZETTO (from Sonata in C minor)
Percy Whitlock (1903-1946)

During his lifetime Percy Whitlock wrote three Sonatas, the first two being early works, a 'Sonata for Violin and Organ' composed in 1919 when he was still at school and a 'Sonata for Violin and Pianoforte' composed in 1924 when Whitlock was in his final year at the Royal College of Music in London. To date, neither of these works have been found.
The four-movement Sonata in C minor for organ represents a major landmark, firstly in Whitlock's own development as a composer, and secondly as one of the greatest sonatas in the organ repertoire. The Scherzetto is quintessentially Whitlock and was inspired by a recuperative holiday which he and his wife Edna took in May 1934 with several long walks in the countryside and a visit to Bath Abbey and its then organist Ernest Maynard. Arguably one of the best extended light movements written for the organ by an Englishman, one early commentator described it as "cunning", no doubt referring to the artfulness of its rhythmic devices. It reflects Whitlock's own puckish sense of humour and his love of light music.
The first, full public performance was given by the composer in a recital at the West London Synagogue on 8 March 1938.


CONCERTANTE STUDY
Frantisek Vrána (born 1914)

The Czech composer Frantisek Vrána, like Janácek, comes from Moravia. He studied organ and composition in Brno and Prague and in 1939, joined the Czechoslovak Radio, first in Moravska Ostrava as pianist, and later in Prague where he became Music Manager. His compositions include symphonic and chamber works as well as vocal. His organ music includes a Passacaglia, an Intermezzo and two Concert Studies of which this one, composed in 1934, is the first.
Marked Allegro Vivace, it is nominally in C major and is technically demanding throughout. Beginning quietly over a low tonic pedal point, the two outer sections generate great rhythmic and harmonic energy from a short chromatic motif of three rising notes. The first section subsides into the central Meno mosso, cantabile to provide a brief lyrical contrast. The third section rises to a massive coda over another low pedal C on its way to the final cadence.


PRELUDE, FUGUE AND VARIATION IN B MINOR, OP. 18
César Franck (1822-1890)

Franck, although a native of Liège in Belgium, came to be regarded as a French composer, since he lived and worked in Paris for the greater part of his life. For many years he was the organist of Sainte-Clothilde where, badly paid and perpetually in fear of dismissal by his employer, he came into his own and played with exquisite sensibility. In 1858, Franck had the privilege of inaugurating the impressive new organ in Sainte-Clothilde. It was the work of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899), an organ builder who settled in Paris and quickly established his reputation by designing and producing instruments which, thanks to sometimes controversial innovations, added immensely to the organ's capabilities and encouraged a new style of playing and composing in the French school during the second half of the 19^th century. Some of the finest examples of his work are to be found in the Parisian churches of Notre Dame, the Madeleine and Sainte-Sulpice. Over the next thirty years or so, Franck was able to try out his ideas on an instrument worthy of them and it was during this period that he composed his most important organ pieces.
The Prélude, Fugue and Variation, one of Franck's best-loved and hauntingly melodic organ pieces and the third of a set of six composed between 1860 and 1862, is inscribed to Camille Saint-Saëns. The restrained Fugue contrasts with the long winding melody of the Prelude, to which the Variation adds a quietly rippling accompaniment.


SCHERZO SYMPHONIQUE (1974)
Pierre Cochereau (1924-1984) transcribed by Jeremy Filsell

Pierre Cochereau studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Marcel Dupré, Maurice Duruflé and Norbert Dufourcq and was awarded first prizes in organ, harmony, and composition. He became organist of L'Église Saint-Roch in 1942 and was subsequently appointed titular organist of Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris in 1955. Director of the Mans Conservatoire from 1950 to1956, he went on to become the Director of the Nice Conservatoire in 1962, a position which he held until his appointment of Director of the Lyon Conservatoire in 1980.
Pierre Cochereau had an extensive international performing career with more than two thousand concerts throughout the world (including 25 tours to the USA) and numerous television and radio broadcasts. Whilst his original compositions for the instrument are few, he was pre-eminent as an improviser and was universally famed for his inspired and dazzling organ improvisations. A deeply religious man with an innate desire to share his passion and make the organ accessible to all, he strongly believed that his musical participation in the services at Notre Dame Cathedral should be perfectly linked to the unfolding of the Mass. Fascinating all who met him with his legendary charisma, his untimely premature death in 1984 robbed the public and organ world alike of not only an enormously talented performer but also an artist of immense musical and general culture.
During the 1970s several of his improvised pieces were recorded, among them this virtuoso Scherzo Symphonique. Although Cochereau recorded two almost identical versions of the scherzo, one in 1968 and the other in 1974, Jeremy Filsell has transcribed from the 1974 recording.