Ian Quinn’s new recording follows earlier forays into Russian
(
Tsar of instruments, CHAN10043) and Czech music (CHAN10463).
Christina Antoniadou welcomed the Russian CD, though she thought
much of the playing far from totally committed - see
review.
At least one other reviewer agreed that the music needed more
persuasive advocacy. Similarly, the Czech collection was generally
welcomed as reliable and worthy, though hardly likely to set
the world on fire, a description, damning with faint praise,
which, I fear, also applies to the new CD. Perhaps part of the
problem stems from my expectations of fireworks; apart from the
title piece, the music here is mostly quiet and contemplative,
with just too little variety for my liking.
This new CD takes its title from Charles Ives’ variations
on the tune known in the USA as
America and on the UK
side of the pond as
God Save The Queen. It used to be
the preserve of two great but very different American organists,
Virgil Fox and E Power Biggs; though neither of their recordings
appears to be currently available, there’s a fascinating
rip-roaring clip on
Youtube in
which a flamboyantly-clad Fox tears through the work in fast
order. British organists, too, have made recordings of it, including
a Simon Preston version on Argo, albeit recorded on an American
organ, briefly reissued on 421 731.
There’s a Naxos recording of a wind-band transcription
(8.570559: ‘polished but too unyielding’ - see
review)
and another of William Schuman’s orchestrated version (8.559083),
but the organ recordings currently available all stem from Europe:
as well as the new recording by Iain Quinn, there’s a version
from Philip Scriven (Regent REGCD210, Lichfield Cathedral organ),
one from Hans-Ola Ericsson on BIS-CD510, and Gillian Weir on
Priory PRCD866. Like Quinn, Ericsson’s recital also includes
Adeste
Fidelis and Copland’s fairly well-known
Preamble.
To say that Ives does interesting things with the tune would
be an understatement. Though I’m not a great fan of Ives’ more
aleatoric works, the original organ version of
America has
always appealed to me, though it isn’t to all tastes. An
organ-playing and organ-loving colleague once gave me a recording
which contained this work because he just couldn’t stand
hearing it. If I have any reservations about Quinn’s performance,
it is that he doesn’t make the music sound quite outrageous
enough, though I wouldn’t want him to pull it about as
Virgil Fox does. Quinn takes more than a minute longer than Fox;
the ideal tempo and manner of performance would probably lie
somewhere between the two. Unless and until Sony/BMG decides
to reissue the Biggs recording, Quinn will do as well as any.
For more information about the Biggs version, see Scott Mortensen’s
survey of
recordings available at the time of writing in 2006.
Preceding the Ives we have Copland’s
Preamble for a
Solemn Occasion in the composer’s own organ arrangement
of the orchestral original. It makes an appropriate opening to
the programme in Quinn’s performance. Its comparative conventionality
offers an excellent contrast to the unconventional work which
it precedes.
By comparison with
America, the Ives works which follow
are comparatively conventional - in fact, they’re rather
meditative, not the sort of thing one associates with Ives. But
neither is his First Symphony, which sounds more like the work
of Dvořák. As
Paul
Serotsky puts it, ‘Charles Ives was both a pillar of
the community and a vandal’. These three pieces belong
more to the pillar than to the vandal. I wouldn’t call
any of them essential listening, though I’m pleased that
the two early
Fugues have been recorded for the first
time. They would make useful postludes for a service on a solemn
occasion. Iain Quinn’s notes make a case for regarding
Adeste
Fidelis as quintessential Ives, but it’s rather special
pleading.
Some of Cowell’s eighteen fuguing tunes for other instruments
and combinations have been recorded, but this is the first recording
of his sole work for organ in that genre. Cowell had something
of a reputation as an
enfant terrible, with works designed
to be played by the fist or on the innards of a piano, but, like
the three early Ives works, this is placid and rather restrained
music, evocative of the puritan tradition from which the fuguing
tunes grew. Once again I’m glad that a previously unrecorded
work is now available though I can’t imagine being over
the moon to hear it repeatedly.
Still’s
Reverie is another quiet piece, but one
which was more to my liking in Quinn’s appropriately contemplative
performance. If you haven’t previously encountered the
music of William Grant Still, Chandos have already done him proud
with recordings of his
Song of a New Race and
Afro-American
Symphony - sample excerpts from these on a 2-for-1 collection,
American
Classics (CHAN241-23) or, better still, the parent CDs, CHAN9226
(
Song of a New Race with music by William Dawson and Duke
Ellington) and CHAN9154 (
Afro-American Symphony with Duke
Ellington’s wonderful Suite
The River). Unfortunately,
Chandos have also chosen to couple Ellington’s
The River with
his
Harlem,
Solitude and Dawson’s
Negro
Folk Symphony on CHAN9909; you’ll want this too, thus
involving some awkward duplication.
The Naxos recording of the
Afro-American Symphony (8.559174)
avoids any duplication; it’s coupled there with his
In
Memoriam and
Africa. I’m enjoying listening
to that recording as I write - I intend to include it in my next
Download Roundup. The performance is almost as good as Järvi’s
on Chandos and the other works are well worth hearing. See John
France’s appreciative
review (“a
great CD”) for further details about the music and the
composer.
The two Barber pieces, one of them receiving its first performance,
are attractive and well performed, but neither is exactly memorable.
Stephen Paulus’s
Triptych, which ends the programme,
is listed as the first commercial recording. Of all the pieces
here which are new to the catalogue, this struck me as the most
worthwhile: it seized my interest at the end of a CD which I
didn’t generally find very impressive and Iain Quinn’s
performance is suitably big-boned to match. The first section
brings out the full power of the Coventry organ and of Chandos’s
excellent engineering, the second evokes a still vision and the
third, with its echoes of Messiaen, deposits us out of God’s
blessing into the warm sun, as the Elizabethan proverb has it.
The point of the proverb is the awareness of having moved from
the sacred to the profane, in this case from meditation back
into the suffering world.
The recording is good throughout. Ian Quinn’s own notes
are informative and readable and the booklet also contains the
full specification of the Coventry Cathedral organ, though not
the registration of each piece, which would have been helpful.
If only the music had been more varied and the performances a
tad more enthusiastic.
Brian Wilson
Iain Quinn (Organ of Coventry
Cathedral) 
