James MacMillan - Organ Works (Stephen Farr)

Information

Composer: James MacMillan

1. Kenga e Krushqve
2. Gaudeamus in loci pace
3. St Andrews' Suite: One
4. St Andrews' Suite: Two
5. St Andrews' Suite: Three
6. Offertorium
7. Le Tombeau de Georges Rouault
8. White Note Paraphrase
9. Meditation
10. Wedding Introit
11. Toccata

Stephen Farr, organ

Date: 2020

Label: Resonus

https://www.resonusclassics.com/james-macmillan-organ-works

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Review

This handsome new release brings together all of James MacMillan’s organ music to date, spanning some 36 years of composition and including three premiere recordings. Stephen Farr’s commitment to contemporary organ music is well known and he brings a compelling advocacy to this challenging programme.

The starter track, Kenga e Krushqve (2018), fuses Albanian and Scottish flavours into a highly entertaining nuptial rumba-infused hypno-romp. Equally striking is the concise three-movement St Andrews’ Suite, especially the energetic opener – a vigorous toccata – and the finale, which has a distinctly Hindemithian logic to it. Although moments of genuine calmness and serenity are few and far between, the Suite’s central panel has a distinctively pastoral lilt and the spacious, floaty Offertorium (1986) offers a pleasing mix of Caledonian folksiness and peaceful unhurriedness, aided by some delicious shimmering strings at the conclusion.

A MacMillan programme will always contain some grittier, tougher fare. Gaudeamus in loci pace (1998) melds plainsong with birdsong chirpings in a polytonal maze. The most substantial and taxing work on the disc, Le tombeau de Georges Rouault (2003), will take several auditions for all its ingredients to fall into place. This is a veritable audio pantomime, chock-full of sharply etched contrasts: a playful hint here of the big top, perhaps; a recurring twisted incipit from Fučik’s Entry of the Gladiators possibly? Gargoyles leer, demonic reed stops sneer, the whole heady mix totters towards a cataclysmic collapse at 9'40". Needless to say, Stephen Farr makes light work of its immense technical and interpretative challenges.

The Meditation (2010) draws on material from MacMillan’s Strathclyde Motet Qui meditabitur, its contrapuntal writing elaborating most satisfactorily before building to a mighty climax. Boundless energy and clarity of texture characterise the most recent work on the disc, the Toccata (2019), with the 1992 Rieger instrument displaying all its sparkling colours. Here MacMillan concocts a scintillating whirligig of tumbling figurations, contrasting dance with plainsong in a dramatic tour de force. Adam Binks’s engineering is well-nigh perfect, as is Stephen Farr’s immaculate playing.

-- Malcolm Riley, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Dec/Macmillan-organ-RES10266.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/instrumental/james-macmillan-organ-works/

https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/james-macmillan-organ-works-stephen-farr/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/james-macmillan-organ-works-mw0003408105

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James MacMillan (born 16 July 1959) is a Scottish classical composer and conductor. He studied composition at the University of Edinburgh with Rita McAllister and Kenneth Leighton, and at Durham University with John Casken. MacMillan came to the attention of the classical establishment with the BBC Scottish SO's premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the Proms in 1990. Further successes have included his second opera The Sacrifice and the St John Passion. MacMillan's music is infused with the spiritual and the political. His Roman Catholic faith has inspired many of his sacred works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_MacMillan

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Stephen Farr is a British organist who until 2014 was Director of Music at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was also Organist and Master of the Choristers of Guildford Cathedral, a post which he held from 1999 until 2007. Farr now pursues an active freelance career, teaching in Oxford, directing the professional choir and general musical programme of St Paul's Church Knightsbridge in London, and performing as a soloist and ensemble player in the UK and abroad. He maintains a regular broadcast presence, and has recorded an extensive discography for labels that include Hyperion, Priory, Nimbus and Virgin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Farr

http://stephenfarr.co.uk/

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