The Spanish organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez is certainly new-media
savvy, with a bright and breezy website and several YouTube
video clips. That said, he is new to me, and this programme
– the Liszt is fiendishly difficult to bring off – strikes me
as pretty ambitious. As for the great organ of Milan Cathedral,
that too is unfamiliar. Intriguingly, it was commissioned in
1937 by the city’s then council chairman, one Benito Mussolini,
drawing on the talents of several Italian organ builders. Not
surprisingly, there were conflicts and fall-outs, but since
its inauguration this 15,350-pipe monster has been dismantled,
rebuilt and, in 1999, thoroughly cleaned.
Liszt wrote this Fantasy and Fugue at Weimar in the winter
of 1850, taking as its cue the stirring chorale sung by the
Anabaptists in Act I of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s five-act blockbuster,
Le Prophète. Given the scale of Liszt’s piece – it’s
in three movements lasting around half an hour – and that of
this instrument, one might be forgiven for feeling intimidated
at the prospect of hearing them together. The rest of the works
on this disc are more modest, and don’t require quite the steel
and stamina that the Liszt demands of organist and audience
alike.
Christopher Herrick, in his version of the Liszt on Hyperion’s
Organ Fireworks X (CDA67458) starts with a restrained
statement of the Ad nos theme’ before diving into the
vasty deep that is the Moderato. Alongside his very modern
instrument – the Létourneau organ of the Winspear Centre in
Edmonton, Canada, was inaugurated in 2002 – the Italian one
sounds far more imposing. Ramírez, like Gilbert & Sullivan’s
suicidal songbird, plunges straight into the billowy wave which,
for the first two minutes at least, threatens to swamp everything
in its path. Indeed, one can only sympathise with the engineers
who have to capture this great wash of sound.
If you and your kit are up to the challenge this is actually
an impressive performance, the gaudy colours of the Milan organ
entirely appropriate for music of such size and ambition. Goodness,
those swirling figures in the first movement are just terrifying,
the bright fanfares ringing out most thrillingly. And despite
excessive reverberation inner detail isn’t compromised nearly
as much as I feared. As for the rolling bass, only one word
will suffice: awesome. But then this is an unashamed
showpiece, so the more flamboyantly it’s played the better.
Clearly Ramírez is a confident performer, for whom this music
holds no terrors. He’s just as adept – and thoughtful – in the
quiet waters of the central Adagio which, for all its
stillness, steers well clear of the doldrums. By contrast Herrick
seems brighter and lighter, the pale northerner pitted against
sun-darkened southerner. It’s a fascinating contrast and one
that, in terms of sheer drama at least, favours the Spanish
player. The Introduction and fugue that brings it all
to a tumultuous close is no less compelling, the storm-dashed
opening bars as exhilarating as I’ve ever heard them. But it’s
the long build-up to that shattering finale that really takes
one’s breath away. The music’s towering dynamics are superbly
caught.
This is an ‘Ad nos’ to remember with awe rather than affection,
but for all that it’s a real achievement for Ramírez. In the
unlikely event that he ever needs a calling card, this is it.
I’m less impressed by the Reger, based on the chorale Straf
mich nicht in deinem Zorn (‘Smite me not in thine anger’).
After the abandon of Ad nos this is sober stuff, with
the composer’s deep, resonant writing apt to sound glutinous
in such a vast acoustic. That said, the pedals are powerfully
felt, and will give your woofers a workout.
After all that drabness César Franck’s Pièce héroïque –
the last the Trois Pièces of 1878 – should come
as something of a relief. Regrettably, the colour and rhythmic
vitality that characterises Kalevi Kiviniemi’s version – review
– is not in evidence here. That probably has less to do with
Ramírez than it does with the Milan organ and its cavernous
acoustic, neither of which is particularly well suited to Franck’s
more diaphanous passages. True, the Pièce héroïque lives
up to its name in both recordings, but Kiviniemi’s Pori organ
matches splendour with clarity and crisp articulation, qualities
almost entirely absent from the Ramírez account.
Lightness and sparkle are surely de rigueur in Edwin
Lemare’s transcription of Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre.
Ramírez finds some of the latter in his choice of registration,
but otherwise his performance seems lumpish and overblown. For
a wittier, more characterful account try Wayne Marshall’s delightful
version, played on the organ of Coventry Cathedral (EMI 7243
5 72804 2 6). If anything, this demonstrates just how important
it is to get the programme right; the Liszt was an inspired
choice, but the rest of this disc simply misfires.
Ramírez is an organist I’d like to hear again, albeit in more
suitable repertoire and a less adversarial acoustic. That said,
his Ad nos is a stunner, and I’d endorse this release
for that alone.
Dan Morgan
Raúl Prieto Ramírez (organ) 
