My acquaintance with
Petr Eben’s music goes way back to the
late 1980s, when great wobbly heaps
of imported Supraphon LPs were being
shifted at rock bottom prices by an
enterprising and still successful local
shop in The Hague. It was like home
from home. My first mass purchases of
Supraphon LPs had been for 50p a throw
in the basement of Newport’s W.H. Smith
(now MacDonalds’ toilet). For those
school dinner-money prices one is prepared
to take the occasional risk, and so
my insatiable curiosity meant that names
like Eben, Trojan, Kalabis, Klusák,
Feld and Fišer became like childhood
friends.
Having already been
enchanted by Petr Eben’s ‘Windows’ I
subsequently found myself less attracted
to the other organ releases which supplemented
my collection until now. With this new
Hyperion release I am delighted to discover
that my initial interest has been fully
justified, and my disappointment more
the result of trying to extract real
music from those less appealing scratchy
LPs. Not yet having sampled the other
volumes in Hyperion’s new series I can
only assume that the quality of both
music and performances is as high as
on the present CD, which now means having
to make a start on saving up to complete
the set – don’t tell the missus!
Eben has for a long
time specialised in composing for organ,
and Landscapes of Patmos is one
of a number of pieces that combine the
organ with other instruments. The composer
writes ‘The combination of organ and
percussion is one … in which the organ
can display the whole richness of sound
with no restriction to the softer stops.’
Eben has a practical approach, and in
order to make the piece playable has
restricted the percussion instrumentation
to smaller, more portable instruments
capable of being set up in most organ
galleries. The Landscapes each
make reference to images from the biblical
Apocalypse, but Eben refers to
them as symbolic, abstract events rather
than pictorial or programmatic pieces.
He contrasts the instrumentation with
each movement, using drum sounds, metallic,
and wooden for each of the three (out
of five) main movements respectively.
The drums accentuate the organs rhythmic
entries, heightening the drama of already
potent, sometimes creepingly menacing
or angular, stabbing chords in the opening
Landscape with Eagle. The second
movement, Landscape with Elders,
combines tubular bells, crotales and
tom-toms in a quite spare and remote
sounding collection of textures, the
organ and percussion rarely overlapping.
Landscape with Temple is a longer,
solemn movement with gongs emerging
from the organ’s slow, chorale-like
material. This develops along with tubular
bells, whose rich harmonics work highly
effectively with the colour of the organ.
Sparkling glockenspiel accentuate the
intermittent ostinati in the central
section, and an arch-form brings back
the bells and gongs toward the end.
Landscape with Rainbow is the
shortest of the five, re-introducing
rhythmic conversations between the organ
and tom-toms, and leading into the final
movement with ringing upper voices in
the organ and more tubular bells. The
two outer ‘animal’ movements hold the
greatest drama, and the last, Landscape
with Horses return to angular organ
figurations with woodblocks, cowbells
and xylophone, this last inviting the
only direct aural comparison to Bartók’s
‘Sonata for two pianos and percussion’.
Like all the works
on this CD, Landscapes rewards
repeated, attentive listening. The colourations
between percussion and organ make for
a fascinating musical journey, and the
balance and distance with both instruments
is perfect, giving the impression of
a concert performance rather than an
artificially over-miked recording. If
I have any criticism it is only that
the whole piece is never quite as apocalyptic
as I might have expected from such a
subject.
Prelude I and
Gloria (Prelude 2) are basically
festive works, the first for the retirement
of the American concert artists manager
Karen McFarlane, and the second to mark
the 65th birthday of the
Bishop of Mainz, Cardinal Karl Lehmann.
These occasional pieces are characterised
by their short duration, and by contrasting
sections in which the organ is allowed
roam expressively or to thrill in full,
visceral splendour. Never superficial,
Eben manages to pack a great deal into
both pieces, the Gloria being
based on Gregorian chant – although
you probably wouldn’t guess it!
Triptychon was
written as a commission from the Hofkirche
in Lucerne. The music is sourced from
the organ tablature, namely the Three
Ricercari of Johann Benn, who was
born c.1590 around Messkirch, Baden.
Eben set this material into his own
personal idiom, and the themes used
appear less as overt statements but
more often amalgamated into more contemporary
organ textures. The overall impression
is one of ‘almost’ variations, each
movement being through-composed but
with a distinct sense of rondo-like
cadence. This is quite approachable
organ music, with typical colour and
variety in the textures and registrations
– if you like (for instance) Jehan Alain
you will find much to enjoy here.
Campanae gloriosae
was another commission, this time
from the Cathedral of Trier to mark
the 25th anniversary of their
organ. The piece derives its material
from the five notes of the cathedral
bells, and those of a neighbouring church.
Organ works based on bells seem to be
almost invariably jovial and up-beat,
and this is no exception. There are
moments where Eben almost seems to be
having a joke with the organ, playing
around with semitone intervals and repeating
notes to make it sound like a barrel-organ.
There is a reflective central section
which uses a vox humana vibrato,
which is fortunately quite restrained
and subtle on the wonderful sounding
instrument used on this recording. The
final section is suitably ‘Carillon
de Trier’, with plenty of thematic
gamesmanship with the notes of the glorious
bells.
So to ‘Windows’. Okma
is the piece for which many will
have been waiting in this series, and
it receives a recording and performance
that will in no way disappoint. My scratchy
old Supraphon LP has the organist who
played the first performance, Milan
Šlechta, but a different trumpeter from
that premiere performance in 1977. That
1981 recording comes in at 18:22, but
with a more resonant acoustic I am unsurprised
by the slightly longer timing here (20:13).
In any case, the Hyperion recording
is superior in every respect, with the
trumpet far closer to the organ in terms
of balance. The trumpet fits in with
the acoustic, and grows in and out of
the organs textures in the way the composer
must have intended. The muted trumpet
and restrained organ sounds of the second
‘Green Window’ movement are particularly
magical. The ‘Windows’ are of course
Marc Chagall’s stained glass work representing
the tribes of Israel, and for me the
poetic nature of Chagall’s colour and
images was never better reflected than
in the way these pieces are presented
here. Jan Fredrik Christiansen’s trumpet
playing is effortlessly expressive and
musical, with a wide range in sound
spectrum from soft and rounded, elliptically
eloquent, or penetrating the organ’s
fff like a tungsten dart; for
instance at the end of the ‘Red Window.’
I had my follicles all ready to be rearranged
by the polytonalities of the final ‘Golden
Window’, and even after a number of
hearings this recording has yet to let
me down. I’m putty in the hands of a
simple chorale with wrong notes over
the top, and the two musicians place
their parts perfectly: understated,
but convincingly eloquent, and later
with plenty of bravura playing with
which to close this excellent record.
As with many a collector’s
series I’m sure that anyone who has
tried and enjoyed the other issues in
this series will need little prompting
to add this to their collection. Hyperion’s
organ recording oozes sheer class, and
the instrument itself possesses a rare
and exquisite tonal quality which may
have something to do with its use of
a variety of earlier pipes, despite
having been built in 1975-6. With the
current daft lead ban, such recycling
may or may not be the future of organ
building in Europe, but in this case
both it, and the music on which it is
played, has something a bit special.
Dominy Clements
Halgier Schiager (organ) 
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