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ID: GMCD7209 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Organ Collection Subcollection: Organ Played by the composer on the organ of the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea |
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ID: GMCD7212 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Organ Collection Subcollection: Organ James Culp at the Great Organ of the First Presbyetrian Church Kilgore, Texas
Recorded at The First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas - February 1992 |
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ID: GMCD7214 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: World Music Subcollection: Piano Tomas Bächli & Petra Ronner - Piano |
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ID: GMCD7225 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Organ Collection The Organ of Tonbridge School Chapel
Dr. Arthur Wills was Director of Music at Ely Cathedral from 1958 to 1990, and also held a Professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1964 until 1992. He has toured extensively as a recitalist in Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, and has broadcast, appeared on TV and made many recordings, both as a soloist and with the Ely Choir. His secular music includes seven song cycles, and an opera "Winston and Julia", based on the Orwell novel "1984". He has composed prolifically for the organ, and his ensemble works include a Concerto with Strings and Timpani, a Concertofor Guitar and Organ, and a Symphonic Suite:- "The Fenlands" for Brass Band and Organ. His book "ORGAN" appeared in the Menuhin Music Guide Series in 1984, with a second edition in 1993 and a third reprint in 1997. The Ely Choir has recently recorded a CD of his choral and organ music from 1955 to 1990 on Herald HAVPCD 1997. In May 1999 Hyperion Records re-issued two recordings from the early 80's on one CD - his Symphonic Suite: "The Fenlands" for Organ and Brass Band, including also music by Elgar and Walton, together with Dr. Wills' transcription of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" for solo Organ(CDH55003). His recording entitled "Full Stops" first issued in 1978, whichincludes his Variations on "Amzing Grace" was re-issued on CD 84305 in 1995 by Meridian. Novello have recently published his transcription for organ of three movements from Holst's PLANETS Suite - Mars, Venus and Jupiter. |
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ID: GMCD7226 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Subcollection: Choral and Organ Christopher Eastwood plays the organ for In The Bleak Midwinter, and conducts The Three Kings.
Mark Williams (A Spotless Rose)
Rebecca Willcox (In The Bleak Midwinter)
William Tallon (In The Bleak Midwinter)
Sylvia Garnsey (Coventry Carol, Once In Royal)
Thomas Lydon (Three Kings)
Poulenc: Quatre Motets Pour Le Temps De Noel
Poulenc’s religious music, while expressing perfectly his profound Catholic faith, was always closely bound up with his relationships with friends and lovers. He had been catapulted back to the church in 1936 by the death in appalling circumstances of the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud. His great opera Dialogues des Carmelites was deeply affected by the illness and death of his lover Lucien Roubert. These four exquisite miniatures seem to have been written, between November 1951 and May 1952, at least in part as gifts for their dedicatees: indeed they are such private pieces that no proper record exists of their first performance. What may have been their premiere was given, rather incongruously, in Madrid by the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Poulenc dedicated the first of them, a dark, tender setting of "O Magnum Mysterium", to the conductor of that performance, Felix de Nobel. The gentle second motet "Quem Vidistis Pastores" was a tribute to one of Poulenc’s closest woman friends, Simone Girard. She was the secretary of the Avignon Concerts Society and by all accounts an indefatigable organiser and fine amateur pianist. To Poulenc she was indispensable. In a letter of 1951, in which he offers her the "Quem Vidistis", he tells her "You have the ultimate intelligence - quite simply that of the heart, a sentiment surely appropriate to this evocation of the simple shepherds seeing the star over Bethlehem. The set is completed by a setting, marked "Calme et doux", of "Videntes Stellam", and an exultant "Hodie Christus Natus Est" which seems to be made up entirely of fanfares. |
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ID: GMCD7232 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Baroque Subcollection: Keyboard Recorded: The Priory Church of Our Lady and St. Cuthbert, Worksop, Nottinghamshire on 1-4 January 2001 by kind permission of the Vicar, the Reverend Fr. Andrew Wagstaff SSC.
The instrument used in this recording.
The clavichord was made by Derek Adlam in 1982. It is a copy of an instrument of 1763 by Johann Adolph Hass, Hamburg, Russell Collection, Edinburgh.
Brass strung, the clavichord has a five octave compass of FF to f3, unfretted, with an additional 4 foot string in the bass. The pitch is a1 = 405Hz, an approximation of mid-18th century Hamburg pitch.
Tuning: a sixth-comma system is used (Young 2), allowing free modulation but retaining a sense of key and chord colour.
The Clavichord
The clavichord appeared in Europe towards the end of the 14th century. By 1404, the terms clavichordium and clavicymbalum described clearly distinct stringed keyboard instruments. Many 15th century representations of keyboard instruments appear in stained glass, carvings, and in paintings and manuscripts. No instruments survive from before 1480, the approximate date of an upright harpsichord in the museum of the Royal College of Music, London. No clavichord before about 1540 has come down to us, but many depictions, treatises and poems relating to the clavichord give us a clear view of these earliest instruments and their use.
The clavichord’s method of tone production is unlike any other stringed instrument. The strings pass over a bridge glued to a soundboard, and their opposite ends are wrapped in a ribbon of woollen cloth which prevents their vibration. The strings are sounded by metal blades called tangents, driven into the distal ends of the key levers. When a key is depressed, the tangent rises to strike the string and, remaining in contact with it while the finger rests on the key, defines its speaking length like a second bridge. The tangent also isolates the speaking section of the string from the damping material, leaving it free to vibrate. When a key is released and the tangent falls away from the string, the damping fabric can once again stop the string’s vibration.
>The singular feature of this simple system is that the tangent strikes the string at one end of its speaking length, i.e. a part of a string normally fixed. In striking the string at a non-vibrating part, the tangent can supply it with only a very small amount of energy. The tangent’s sudden but slight displacement of the string from its plane of rest, and a small shock wave which travels down it towards the bridge, cause it to vibrate and produce its sound.
What then is the advantage distinguishing the clavichord from the harpsichord? Despite the small sound, a clavichord player can achieve a considerable range of loud and soft tone. This effect was impossible to achieve on any other keyboard instrument by the fingers alone before the invention of the Florentine piano at the end of the 17th century. The clavichord player also is in contact with the string itself, so remains in control of the means of tone production. By varying the pressure, effects (including a vibrato) can be obtained which are achievable only on the clavichord. The instrument takes on some of the characteristic inflections and modulations of the human voice, an ideal instrumentalists have aimed at throughout the history of western music. Its intimacy of tone led to its association with personal expression and philosophical reflection. It became a spiritual confidant and comforter in times of distress.
Throughout the 17th century, use of the clavichord became more localized and especially in France, Italy and England, it gradually fell from favour. In these countries, schools of composition developed which exploited the rich tonal characteristics and potential for brilliant technical display of plucked keyboard instruments. In Germany, the clavichord remained highly important as a study and practice instrument, particularly for organists. It also suited a tendency towards spiritual introspection amongst German composers.
Despite the clavichord’s popularity in Germany, almost no music was written specifically for the instrument before the musical innovations of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons and the growth of a new, expressive Empfindsamer Stil, the ‘style of sentiment’. We have no definite proof of Bach’s opinion of the clavichord beyond a statement by his first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, 1749-1818, whose information supposedly came from Bach’s sons:
"…. he considered the clavichord the best instrument for study and for any music performed in an intimate setting. He found it the most able to express his most refined thoughts …. [and] capable of so many subtleties within its small scale…."
Forkel was one of a group of enthusiastic "Bachists" who continued to revere the works of Johann Sebastian and to promote the clavichord as an ideal instrument even in the face of the increasing popularity of the fortepiano. Even if Forkel’s report is not completely impartial, clavichords would without question have been used frequently in Bach’s household. It is appropriate to perform Bach’s keyboard music on the clavichord, even when the scale of a work seems to suggest a more powerful and extravert instrument. The scale of the instrument may be small, but its dynamic and expressive range can meet the requirements of music conceived on the largest scale. When heard with a receptive and unprejudiced ear, the clavichord’s limitations become insignificant. |
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ID: GMCD7235 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Subcollection: Cello Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Djong Victorin Yu, James Kreger - Cello |
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ID: GMCD7237 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Romantic Music Recorded:St Paul’s School,London 13-15 April 2001 |
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ID: GMCD7241 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Chamber Music Subcollection: Piano Recorded: Potten Hall, Suffolk, England on 8 December 2001 |
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ID: GMCD7244 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Vocal Collection Subcollection: Vocal and Piano Recorded: Seltzer Sound, New York City 16 October and 18 December 2001 |
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