This is an intriguing and worthwhile organ programme for the
open-minded collector.
Philip Glass’s music quite often has a fairly small-scale, more
intimate quality, and at first I wondered how the grand and
magnificent gestures which fly out of your speakers with the
opening Dance 2 were going to sustain nearly 25 minutes
worth of composition with limited amounts of notes and a single
rhythmic ostinato. This version of the music may inspire or
infuriate you, but the irrepressible Kevin Bowyer’s powerful
wrists survive the ordeal somehow. Glass’s Dance Pieces were
written in the early 1970s in collaboration with choreographer
Lucinda Childs and artist Sol Lewitt. If you think you know
these pieces from the Philip Glass Ensemble’s recording you
may find them hard to recognise in this more extrovert setting,
but there is no taking away from the single-minded and purposeful
nature of the music and this performance. Dance 4 is
if anything more convincing than Dance 2, the greater
harmonic variation creating a more impressive effect. Like Widor’s
famous Toccata on some kind of high-octane mind-fuel,
this has a heavy ‘wow’ factor if not a great deal more sophistication
than the theme from ‘The Magic Roundabout’, and I love playing
it really loud and winding up the cat.
There is something very physical about the directness of effect
which the two Dance pieces have on this recording, and
you may find your body has changed shape by the end of Dance
4. The arrangement Michael Riesman made of Satyagraha
Act III Finale, the closing section of Philip Glass’s
1980 opera about the life of Ghandi or ‘the good bit’ as some
critics of the opera might have described it, is an altogether
gentler and more lyrical affair. A rising ostinato accompaniment
creates a harmonic bed for the simple melodic phrases which
exist above. Bowyer’s tempo is a little faster than I remember
from the CBS recording of the opera, and the music might have
had a more meditative or reflective quality, but it still works
very well on organ.
Organist and composer Christopher Bowers-Broadbent has written
the booklet notes for this release, and the explanation of Duets
and Canons, here in a world premiere recording is
therefore direct from the source. Bowers-Broadbent describes
the nine movements as being based on the plainsong of the Mass,
and makes an important point about the organ’s lack of percussive
quality, the organist therefore relying on “subtle nuance of
rhythm and relative length of note to achieve his expression.”
This music is quite sparing and transparent, more often than
not with just a few voices intertwining or sparring with each
other in a context which joins the ancient feel of plainsong
scales and harmonic relationships with contemporary sensibilities
of a less vocal abstraction of line. This is a remarkable piece
which, while perhaps not easy to grasp at first, does get under
your skin in a strange way. The cadences of the opening Kyrie
are relatively straightforward, with Tippett-like melodic
variations and ornamented lines, but the buffeting elbows of
the Credo are like a disturbing short-story, nagging
at the imagination and taking up more brain-space than you would
expect. The disjointed notes of the Sanctus are like
a section of Messiaen’s Livre d’orgue entering the idiom
of and emanating from a medieval ritual. Indeed, the entire
piece has quite a ‘ritualistic’ feel to it: actions controlled
and fixed by traditions and time, but with meanings forgotten
and lost among the mouldering rafters of a cathedral hidden
within the walls of Gormenghast.
This is by no means a conventional choice for an organ recital
recording, but if you are up for a horizon-widening challenge
then this is for you. Dance 2 is perhaps a little thin
in compositional terms to take on the full weight of an entire
performance on the magnificent Marcussen Organ in Tonbridge
School, but the other pieces more than make up for this, and
Dance 4 is my organ anthem of the moment and no doubt
many more moments to come. A fine recording and superhuman performance
from Kevin Bowyer certainly sell this CD for me.
Dominy Clements
Kevin Bowyer (organ) 
