MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £12 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Sound Samples and Downloads

Arvo PÄRT (b.1935)
Mein Weg Hat Gipfel und Wellentäler (1988) [8:05]
Trivium [6:18]
Annum per Annum (1980) [7:34]
Pari Intervallo (1976) [5:31]
Einojuhani RAUTAVAARA (b.1928)
Toccata, op.59 (1971) [6:44]
Laudatio Trinitatis (1969) [9:19]
Ta Tou Theou, op.30 (1967) [11:38]
Sofia GUBAIDULINA (b.1931)
Hell und Dunkel (1976) [7:41]
Henryk GÓRECKI (1933-2010)
Kantata, op.26 (1968) [15:53]
Kevin Bowyer (organ)
rec. Chapel of St. Augustine, Tonbridge School, Kent, England, May-June 1999. DDD
NIMBUS NI 5675 [78:43]
 

Experience Classicsonline



This very amply-filled CD was originally released in 2001. Nimbus's reasons for titling it 'Arvo Pärt: the Music for Organ' are not self-evident: the four pieces may constitute his complete works, but Einojuhani Rautavaara's contribution is actually longer by a few seconds, and just as impressive. Nor, for that matter, is anyone likely to forget Henryk Górecki's Kantata at the end of Kevin Bowyer's superb, often rollicking recital.
 
Although this is a disc of religious works, the music is more hat-lifting fire-'n'-brimstone than uplifting chorale. Górecki's Kantata op.26, for example, begins and ends as a tsunami of dissonance in huge chords, a veritable rude awakening for those who know only his gentle Third Symphony. Bowyer's programme opens with Rautavaara's Toccata op.59, which is more recognisably diatonic, but still very noisy in places. Much the same can be said of Rautavaara's two other featured works, though Laudatio Trinitatis contains arguably his finest organ music. The odd-looking title Ta Tou Theou is Greek (τά τού Θεού) for 'that which is God's', a snippet from Jesus's famous "Render unto Caesar" speech in the St Matthew Gospel.
 
Sofia Gubaidulina's Hell und Dunkel - like Rautavaara's Ta Tou Theou and Pärt's Trivium, somewhat pretentiously intended to be written, for no compelling reason, without capitals - is a dramatic phantasmagoria of strange effects, not necessarily congregation-friendly, with an ending that sounds something like a phone left off the hook.
 
The works by Arvo Pärt are altogether softer, more melodic and presumably far more likely to crop up in a church service somewhere. Christopher Bowers-Broadbent appropriately quotes Pärt in his notes as saying of his music: "I don't want too many things happening." Yet for all its relative straightforwardness, and Pärt's own religious asceticism, his music is never dull. Indeed, it is frequently beautiful in its simplicity of rhythms, melodies and harmonies, as in Annum per Annum, a kind of mini-Mass for organ - which has both an opening and an ending, by the way, in which Pärt demonstrates very ably that he can do stained-glass-rattling loud too. Bowyer has, incidentally, also recorded this for Naxos (8.558182/3, review). Bowyer's recording of Pärt's reflective Pari Intervallo also appears on Nimbus NI5580/1, which is a double-disc selection of mainly modern British works for organ also played on the excellent Marcussen organ in the Chapel of St. Augustine at Tonbridge School in Kent.
 
Pari Intervallo is an emotionally intense work, but not "probably Pärt's most beautiful composition", as Bowers-Broadbent, who has recorded it himself, writes: there are simply too many other works of Pärt's with a greater claim. Incidentally, Mein Weg Hat Gipfel und Wellentäler is German for 'My Path Has Peaks and Troughs': where Bowers-Broadbent got the dictionary that gave a "possible translation", as he puts it, of "my journey has great heights and wavy depths" is anyone's guess!
 
In all these works, Kevin Bowyer gives yet another virtually irreproachable performance, by this time nearing the end of his recording contract with Nimbus that has given a grateful posterity around 50 CDs. The discography available on his website is three years out of date, but already 14 pages long! Bowyer's incredible Sorabji Organ Project is still unfurling, but its final completion promises to be one of the greatest organ events in the history of music.
 
Sound and production are of the highest quality. The CD booklet has an attractively colourful design - a far cry from Nimbus's earlier days! The notes by organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent are well written, though perhaps more flowery than informative. Curiously, the back inlay track listing is laid out differently from the one inside the booklet, grouping the works under composer - on the disc the playing order is mixed. There is a spelling mistake in the German title of one of Pärt's work ('Wennentäler' should be 'Wellentäler'), though this is corrected inside the booklet.
 
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk

see also review by Dominy Clements

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.