Episodes: 2002

What’s past was yesterday’s future. In this week’s program we take look in both directions by summing up happenings in the year 2002 and projecting our future into the new year. We’ll have snapshots from a European tour, birthday celebrations for some noted composers, a few highlights from superb concerts we’ve attended, and reflections on important personalities who have gone to their reward. Trumpets sound forth, ancient pipes sing out, and persuasive personalities make the case for the King of Instruments as we celebrate the New Year and savor highlights from the Old. This week we take our annual look back & forward by pondering the pages in An Organist’s Yearbook.

Our songs are without words, colorful portraits painted with tones alone. This week, Paul Manz spins tuneful improvisations around familiar holiday melodies, and then Olivier Messiaen infuses mere chords and rhythms with an almost iconic presence. Shepherds and Magi, heavenly hosts and eternal purposes hover above a mother and child in Bethlehem, as we meditate upon the magic of the season and the mysteries of faith. Nine recitalists, from Germany, Britain, Sweden, the United States and France retell the story of The Nativity of the Lord in a unique expression for holiday reflection.

The charm of folk tunes and the charismatic character of an international array of instruments and soloists enlivens this program of seasonal fare. Franz Lehrndorfer improvises at Saint Boniface Church in Munich, Ann Labounsky plays the work of her famous teacher Jean Langlais, and Todd Wilson shows off the Skinner organ at Cleveland’s Severance Hall. We offer holiday music of the shepherds and angels from around the world. Listen to variations from Munich and Dieppe, hymn preludes from Cleveland and Tacoma, and fine-wrought fantasies from Methuen and Fort Lauderdale as part of A Christmas Festival.

It is a procession of hope, a progression from darkness into light, the weeks of Advent anticipation. But this week, we’ll rush the season a bit, mixing music of joyful abandon with other scores perhaps just a bit reticent and watchful. Joel Martinson, John Rutter, William Mathias and Richard Purvis give fresh interpretation to prophetic scripture, while organists John Gowens, Guy Bovet, Richard Cummins and Frederick Hohman apply the King of Instruments to a celebration of the King of Kings. Poetic reflections and exuberant outbursts proclaim a holy season, with overriding hopes for peace on earth. With carols and anthems, preludes and dances, let instruments and choirs lift your spirits in anticipation of Christmas as we Prepare the Way.

The professional journals show an incredible stream of new organs, but when the national newspapers herald the installation of some lovely instrument, you get a convincing sense that the pipe organ is still a viabile medium for our modern times. In this week’s program, we celebrate two new instruments in Minnesota: the Noack organ at Saint Paul Seminary Chapel, and a new Casavant at Incarnation Lutheran Church, a Saint Paul suburb. We’ll also travel to the cathedral in Treviso, Italy, for a continental perspective. With music from Mozart to Messiaen, David Jenkins, Diane Belcher and Eric Lebrun put three new organs through the motions, proving that the art of the king of instruments is alive and well in the 21st century.

There is nothing like the spontaneity of a live performance. In most cases, you simply had to have been there. To help the rest of us out, this week’s show brings the thrill of it all to our door. Savor the excitement when young virtuoso Raina Wood plays at Emory University, when John Ogasapian explores byways of American music at Saint Thomas Church, New York, and when the duet team of Dee Ann Crossley and Nancy Lancaster make the House of Hope Fisk organ in Saint Paul really sing. All of our music was recorded In Concert and you’ll hear it as it happened.

From sprightly Renaissance dances to grandious symphonies, this week’s show celebrates the many diverse elements which make organ music so remarkable, and a mirror of changes in western culture. Style, emotion, compositional and mechanical ingenuity all play a part in creating music of joy and contemplation, of restraint and exhultation. Whether in folk-song improvisation or anthem accompaniment, flashy toccata or rhumba-inspired trumpet voluntary, the pipe organ does it all. Listen to newly released compact discs from around the world in this sonic spectacular.

Famous also for his superb improvisations and exacting teaching methods, today we remember him through his compositions. This week’s show explores fourteen virtuosic and poetic movements from the pen of French wizard Marcel Dupré. We’ll hear the three Preludes & Fugues of Opus 7 that set the world afire when he was but 26, four of his Opus 50 Inventions, ironic miniatures, concise as an Oriental haiku, and the Seven Pieces which he wrote during his tours in the 1920s and dedicated to friends he made along the way. In his twenties he astonished the world with virtuosity, by his thirties he’d amazed us with his depth, and throughout his career we regarded him as the best there was. The great man himself teams up with his former students and advocates in a musical offering of Seven Pieces, times two.

It’s not every day that Bach’s Royal Instrument gets up and jigs, but in this week’s show the rambunctious rhythms will make very difficult for you to sit still. Whether from an Italian Renaissance chapel or a Baptist Church in Ohio, our music includes everything from Pavans to Rumbas. The music is so enlivening that two of the instruments actually play themselves. Don’t be a wallflower. Groove to Cuban rhythms, an English Bolero, a Viennese Rumba and many other exciting and exotic examples of why your ideas about the pipe organ may need updating. Put on your dancing shoes and join us on the floor!

This week is all about Music in Monasteries as we revel in the glorious sonorities of instruments old and new in abbey churches and convent chapels. Whether playing a Little Oboe Concerto at southern Germany, moderating a solemn mass in Provence, or celebrating new wine on the Indiana plains, these instruments resound in equal measure for prayer AND praise. Worship and the arts come together at Saint Meinrad, Indiana, Saint Maximin, Provence, and half a dozen other destinations where organ music enhances the life experience with beauty, grace and power. Hear works from four centuries as our tour bus takes us on the rounds, fueled by Abbey Gas.

Music for organ and orchestra enjoys an added spice at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. This week we visit the recent 44-stop Casavant pipe organ to evaluate its considerable potential. Consultant Jeff Weiler talks about its varied background and why, despite a modest specification, it does everything an organ must do in a symphonic space. Soloist David Schrader plays colorful solos and teams up with the Grant Park Symphony for works by Samuel Barber, Walter Piston, Leo Sowerby and Michael Colgrass. American concert halls have come to realize that the room is not complete without the presence of the King of Instruments. Understand why and join in a Chicago Celebration: the Casavant organ at Orchestra Hall.

with slideshow, interviews, restored organs of Oaxaca and more! This week we expand our sense of music’s North American history when we visit the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca to hear pipe organs from the 17th and 18th centuries. While we were barely ‘the colonies’ up north, Mexican natives directed by Spanish artisans practiced the art of organbuilding as early as fifty years following the landing of Columbus. With a refreshing and colorful spirit, instruments in the village of Tlacochahuaya, La Soledad Basilica and the Oaxaca Cathedral illuminate the stories of organists Elisa Freixo, Cristina Garcia Banegas and Roberto Fresco. This is a precious heritage, deserving our careful attention and enthusiastic support. Join us south of the border for a Oaxacan Holiday.

Bold and beautiful sounds from recently inaugurated American-built instruments will engage our ears on this week’s show. Robert Bates plays at Holy Rosary Church in Portland, and John Obetz visits with the Benedictines at Conception Abbey in Missouri. You’ll also hear instruments at West Market Street Methodist in Greensboro, North Carolina, Northridge Presbyterian in Dallas, Texas, and the Community Church in Glenview, Illinois. We’re on the road again with a cross-country sampler of recent American-built instruments, proving that this time-honored art is alive and well as practiced in our United States. Enter into the festivities and concert performances in a series of Debuts and Dedications.

The colors may be noteworthy, but the lengthening of days spells a change of season. This week we’ll steady ourselves against fall, with several musical impressions of summer’s end. Clarence Mader penned an October Interlude, Joseph Bonnet wrote several Autumn Poems, and Antonio Vivaldi takes us on a fox hunt through the crisp countryside. Walt Strony and Lyn Larsen play some seasonal pops favorites, and Kurt Luedders, Cherry Rhodes and Graham Barber lead us in a pageant of color. When the short sleeved shirt gets replaced by a jacket and scarf, you know that summer is behind us and a new season awaits. Enjoy music which embraces the best of fall and join us as we reflect on the multiplicity of colors in Autumn Leaves.

When you’ve got it, flaunt it. As a center for trade and diplomacy, the seventeenth-century north German port of Hamburg was one of the most prosperous independent cultural centers of Europe. As a city, it supported composers like Scheidemann, Praetorius and Reincken who, in turn, provided the foundations of a German Baroque style. This week, we sample the musical life of this cosmopolitan Hanseatic center and hear some of the music and instruments for which the city was, and remains, famous. Guy Bovet, Douglas Bush, Gustav Leonhardt and Julia Brown play upon a proud cultural tradition, and we serve up delectible samples from our Hamburger Hotdish.

A good tune is a joy forever, but instead of repeating the same melody over and over, why not make it different? This week’s show illustrates the art of variation. Organist, Hannes Meyer toys with a European folksong, while the late, great George Thalben-Ball takes the ferocious fiddling of Paganini and transforms it into a virtuosic dance on the organ pedals. Secular or sacred, sumptuous or sometimes just plain silly, our themes provide remarkable opportunity for creative possibilities. It’s all about the altered intent, where one good tune demands another take. By the end, even you’ll be calling out, Play it Again, Sam.

This week’s broadcast is a meditation on that ever necessary, always powerful, inscrutible yet marvelous energy we call love. The choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, sings of the love of God for humankind. Bach and his favored pupil Krebs lovingly decorate Lutheran hymns based on themes of loving kindness. Virgil Fox plays of love’s dream, and other composers explore the range of love as evidenced in folk songs, oratorios and operas. It is a wondrous thing, a power that transports us beyond the mundane and opens new worlds of expression and experience. From folk tunes and hymns, art song and opera, our performers draw upon upon rich resource of music to sooth the soul.

It’s organ and orchestra on our next Pipedreams program, from the inaugural week’s concerts at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall where the Watjen Concert Organ, built by C.B. Fisk, made its debut with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle symphony during the Millennial Year National Convention of the American Guild of Organists. Hatsumi Miura premiere’s Robert Sirota’s new piece, In the Fullness of Time, resident curator Carole Terry performs Aaron Copland’s path-breaking Symphony Number 1, and Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet-Hakim introduces the vibrant Seattle Concerto by her husband, Naji Hakim. The crowds at Benaroya Hall went wild, and you will, too, as we share in Seattle’s Pride, America’s newest concert organ, this week on Pipedreams. There’s unrepentant optimism in the new Seattle Concerto by Naji Hakim, and a world of expressive possibility in music by Copland and Robert Sirota featuring the potent Watjen Concert Organ recently inaugurated at Benaroya Hall by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. It’s Seattle’s Pride this week on Pipedreams.

Further forays into repertoire for the organ “augmented”, in this case by brasses, strings, winds, and electronics.

Recitalist Herman D. Taylor provides perceptive introductions to varied works of African-American composers.

Sounds from the past, featuring 19th and early 20th century instruments between Milwaukee and Madison, played during a national convention of the Organ Historical Society.

On this week’s show, we’ll assess the not inconsiderable accomplishments of three talented offspring who made their own way in the world of music. Wilhelm Friedemann was considered Germany’s foremost organist. Johann Christian converted to Catholicism, studied in Italy, and ended up as the most celebrated import, after Handel, on the London scene. And Carl Philip Emmanuel, after a period of royal servitude, became music director for the city of Hamburg, a job his father lusted after but never himself achieved. Boys will be boys, but when your father is Johann Sebastian Bach there are certain standards to be met, and a degree of individual independence to be sought. Hear the the works of three talented offspring the Sons of ‘B’ music by The Bach Boys, this week on PIPEDREAMS.

We’ve scanned the continent for interesting sounds and have visited churches in California, Massachusetts and Illinois in search of exciting pipe organ installations. Among the choice morsels gathered include John Butt playing Spanish repertoire at the University of California, Berkeley; and Loraine Olson Waters exploring mostly French pieces at the little Mont Marie Chapel in Holyoke. George Edward Damp will also entertain us with english fancies at Saint John the Divine Chapel in Champaign, and Louis Patterson savors romantic moments at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest. The repertoire’s international and historic, but the instruments all were made in the USA. An array of artists celebrate the diverse organs built by American organbuilders Berghaus, Buzard, Harrold and Watersmith.

We step out in a colorful procession in this week’s show by parading select works by American composers. You’ll hear everything from dances to gospel preludes. William Bolcom, Robert Elmore, Howard Hanson, Emma Lou Diemer and Leo Sowerby are just a few of the musicians represented, with works recorded in concert settings in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Rochester, NY, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Our promenade builds from subtlety to strength. If you’ve considered the organ an old-world instrument, think again and join us for a celebration of new world sounds, a virtual Pageant.

On our next Pipedreams program, Wilma Jensen is featured artist, proving that Nashville is not ALL country music. On the Casavant organ at Saint George’s Church, Ms. Jensen plays a recital on churchly themes, from bright preludes and quiet meditations to scenes of the Passion and hymns of the Resurrection. It IS all about love, and dedication, to music for the organ and the church. We celebrate the career of one of Nashville’s unsung star performers, a little woman who can make the big Casavant organ speak its mind. Enjoy the artistry of Wilma Jensen at Saint George’s Church, Nashville, TN.

We celebrate American composers with a program of colorful works to match every mood. From the new-age patterns of William Doerrfeld to the rags of Scott Joplin, from church pieces to concert toccatas we’ll explore the vast domain of American organ music. Fresh, exciting and new would be ways to describe the music you’ll hear. Works by Pamela Decker, Fred Hohman and Charles Ives among others with varied emotions and styles, and powerful gestures all under the inspiration of The American Muse.

It’s a multiplicity of riches on our next Pipedreams program, a sampling from sixteen new releases, including historically correct instruments at Stanford University in California. We’ll also visit Presbyterian churches Rochester and Buffalo, New York, Hexam Abbey in England, and the Cathedrals in Fulda, Germany and Washington DC, hearing Wolfgang Rübsam, Paul Manz, Gillian Weir and still others perform at the top of their game. From the Church of Saint Sulpice in Paris to the west coast of America, we’ll hear colorful music from four centuries of repertoire showcasing the king of instruments in all its glory.

Falling in love is easy to do, especially with the music of Richard Rodgers as accompaniment. Rodgers’ melodic gift in conjunction with lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein, gave new song to three generations. Folks flocked to such shows as The Boys from Syracuse, The Girl Friend and South Pacific, and tunes from those and dozens of other productions still resound throughout the land. It’s a celebration of a great American composer with some of his most famous and most obscure works played organs in theatres, naturally, but also in a home, a high school auditorium and a pizza restaurant. George Wright, Rob Richards, Tom Hazleton and many others will keep you On Your Toes with a Richard Rodgers Centennial Tribute, this week on Pipedreams.

On this Pipedreams program we cover 500 years of Iberian repertoire. From the 16th and 17th century antiquities of Antonio de Cabezon and Juan Cabanilles to the modern Easter outbursts of Jose Antonio de Donostia, we explore the seldom-played music of Spanish composers on Spanish-style instruments here in the United States. Trumpet fanfares from the Old Country take on a new aura played on stylish instruments in North Carolina, California, Ohio and Texas. From Cabezon to Donostia, we celebrate 500 years of Spanish Music in the New World, extraordinary sounds this week on Pipedreams.

Everyone has an opinion, whether asked for or not. On our next Pipedreams program we’ll argue the opinions of eight esteemed artists, each of whom has a personal view of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. I’m not sure we’ll find, or even desire, a consensus, but we will be provoked by the playing of Harald Vogel, Wolfgang Rübsam, Kate van Tricht, and Anthony Newman. We’ll hear them perform on various instruments from Bach’s time and other organs inspired by history and by the methods by which music was generally created when those particular organs were built. The greatest music demands the greatest interpreters, and we find out just how broad the interpretive stage can be when eight players and as many instruments pay homage to the genius of Johann Sebastian. The interpretive pendulum swings Bach and Forth this week on Pipedreams.

Our travels take us to Chicago this week, and the shores of Lake Michigan where American organbuilding traditions come alive on instruments from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Bill Aylesworth showcases the oldest surviving of its kind in Chicago, built by the Hook Brothers of Boston for the Scottish Rite Cathedral. Contrast it with any of the organs listed below, and you’ll realize just how varied organ music can be. Tune in and you might get so excited you’ll want to visit the place for some exploration on your own. Nostalgic zephyr and blasts from the past as we audition instruments from as early as 1875. Bill Aylesworth, Mary Gifford, Wolfgang Rübsam and others respirate the past, as we explore Windy City History, antique organs in Chicago, this week on Pipedreams.

We delight in young talent and celebrate in Seattle on our next Pipedreams program, with highlights of four exceptional players whose award-winning potential bodes well for the organ’s future. Rising stars and Paul Jacobs, though still in their early 20s, have already proven themselves. We hear them in recital at Church of the Epiphany. National AGO Improvisation Competition winner Justin Bischof whips up a storm at Saint James Cathedral, and Interpretation Competition winner Ji-yoen Choi demonstrates her skill on the famous Flentrop organ at Saint Mark’s Cathedral. They are our beacons, shining into the future of the organ art award winning young recitalists in concert in Seattle for the American Guild of Organists, working towards Earning the Prize this week on Pipedreams.

It’s all about the theatre of the imagination on our next Pipedreams program, as we put away our hymn books and follow the King of Instruments to the opera house. Enjoy familiar melodies from Rossini, Puccini, Mozart and Gounod, excerpts from Thais and I Puritani, The Barber of Seville and Die Fledermaus done up in a way you’d never expect. Hear Simon Gledhill at the Sanfilippo Music Salon and Thomas Heywood at Melbourne Town Hall. Delight in mechanical player-organs from the 19th century, and the stunning virtuosity of Wayne Marshall at Peterborough Cathedral. These magic flutes sing a different song, as we explore repertoire from the lyric stage minus the prima donas and helden tenors. Enjoy highlights from Puccini and Donizetti, Mozart, Massenet and Vincenzo Bellini, as we present the extraordinary, even nutritious (?) sounds of organic opera this week on Pipedreams.

We march through a sonically stimulating sequence of recently issued compact discs on our next Pipedreams program. You’ll savor some English instruments from the 18th century, French music from the 17th century, an Austrian antique from the 16th century and a clangorous composition from the 15th century talk about time travel. This week, you’ll also hear first recordings of new music commissioned by a forward-thinking church in Saint Paul, taste the glories of one of America’s grandest concert instruments at Yale’s Woolsey Hall, and relive the exciting times of a popular and well-aid virtuoso. Calvert Johnson, Thomas Murray, John Butt, Roger Fisher and others demonstrate the goods. We’re Going On Record with new CDs in review this week on Pipedreams.

It’s a sophisticated gathering of friendly collaborators and the King of Instruments on this week’s Pipedreams program. We’ll feature five centuries of repertoire, for organ and saxophone, organ and trumpet, organ and flute, organ with choir and brass ensemble, in works by Duke Ellington, Claude Debussy, Henk Badings, J.S. Bach, Giovanni Gabrieli…really an all-star cast. We’ll also play around with some oddities, too, a very old piece written for the organ to be played along with the tolling church bell, and a wonderfully zesty concerto by Michel Corrette, proving that Handel wasn’t alone in knowing that pipes and chamber orchestra make a superb package. Organ and Chamber Orchestra are among the many pleasureful pairings of pipes. Get yourself a real earful, with Organ Plus, this week on Pipedreams.

Spiritual mystery and intellectual clarity may seem incompatible concepts, but for composer Olivier Messiaen, probing them was his life and his art. On our next Pipedreams program, we explore his music that many consider to be the most important written for the organ since Bach: his vivid tonal visions of the Eternal Church, his aural pageants descriptive of Christmas scenes, Pentecostal zeal, and Trinitarian principals. The composer himself, eight of his students and disciples, plus one determined and talented youth who is playing the entire cycle in 9-hour marathon concerts, honor his memory ten years after his death. Pentecostal Tongues and Serene Alleluias sound in praise of a higher power while a remarkable man sees colors in sound and reveals his profound faith in art. Enter a surprisingly satisfying world. We are Attuned to Messiaen…this week on Pipedreams.

He was the big cheese in the French organ world of one hundred years ago, and on our next Pipedreams broadcast we celebrate his legacy with a composite performance of his most famous work. Although he wrote 10 solo organ symphonies, his Number V has always been the most popular, because of its famous concluding Toccata. We’ll hear the entire work, each movement played by a different soloist on a different instrument, plus another symphony, for organ and orchestra, a rare gem presented in concert at the American guild of Organists Convention in Atlanta. Hear the lavish and lovely compositions of Charles-Marie Widor a toast to King Widor this week on Pipedreams.

We’ve a sampler of somewhat unusual and extraordinarly characterful music on our next Pipedreams program, compositions AND instruments by Americans, including James Woodman’s Lydian Versets, played on the John Nordlie organ at the Lutheran Church in Brandon, South Dakota. We’ll hear other pieces by Dan Locklair, Robert Elmore, Richard Purvis, and Philip Glass, played in Stamford, Connecticut, Collegedale, Tennessee, Portland, Oregon, and San Diego, plus we’ll visit the grand old Granad Theatre in Kansas City for some snappy show tunes from yesterday and the day before. Something’s got to give, when we break through maddining misperceptions and expose the pipe organ for what it really always is a marvelously magical music-making machine, playing everything from prayers to pops. We honor a nation of organbuilders and composers and celebrate The American Muse this week on Pipedreams.

The accent is convincing, but the context? On our next Pipedreams program, we listen to a new instrument fashioned in the manner of the great organs by 19th century French builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. But we’re not in a famous Parisian church, rather we’re on the Ohio plains southwest of Cleveland, at Finney Chapel of Oberlin College where the C.B. Fisk company of Gloucester, Massachusetts, set out to provide students with an experience they could only otherwise achieve abroad. We celebrate in style, with solos and orchestral pieces, as faculty recitalists Haskell Thomson and David Boe show off a new instrument which adds to a teaching resource unparalleled at any other American school. Join us at Finney Chapel to savor Oberlin’s New French Fisk, this week on Pipedreams.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote often and well for the king of instruments, but his Hebrides Overture is not usually numbered among his standard organ essays. On our next Pipedreams program, though all of the music sounds simply fantastic, none of it was created for the medium of wind-blown pipes. If you’ve enjoyed the occasional appearance of the pipe organ in his Second and Eighth Symphonies, how about Mahler’s Symphony Number 5 arranged as an organ solo? Good things are where you find them, and Frederick Hohman, Matt Curlee, Alexander Frey, David Briggs, and other friends tackle the matter of orchestral transcriptions with overtures for concert hall and opera house. Not your usual organ recital. For an extraordinary experience, it’s Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Mahler, this week on Pipedreams.

Choirs and instruments together celebrate the Easter Festival on our next Pipedreams program, a joyous collection of music for the Spring Awakening. Gerre Hancock leads the singers from Saint Thomas Church in New York City, Davitt Morony explores early 17th century French works, while David Fuller and friends present an entire organ symphony on an Easter theme. Tendrils of tone waft heavenward as we rejoice in the reawakening energy of spring with works by Widor and Bach, plus contemporary improvisations and fantasies with a new vision. Verses and variations, fantasies and festivity, everything from Gregorian chants to electric guitars blend their songs in an uplifting surge He is Risen a resurrection rouser, this week on Pipedreams.

There’s no denying his place as one of music’s grand masters. Even his name provides a motive for further exploration. On our next Pipedreams broadcast, we celebrate Johann Sebastian Bach with some adventuresome early works, several colorful arrangements of his works by other composers and a few pieces in modern mode which were inspired by his example. In his own time, he was a prime mover and has been an inspiration for musicians ever since. From Alice Tully Hall to Saint Wenzel’s Church in Naumburg, Robert Clark, Catharine Crozier, Barbara Harbach, Anthony Newman, and friends sweep through the workshop and find Chips off the Old Bach, this week on Pipedreams.

Marie Bernadette Dufourcet has delighted audiences with her spectacular playing and proves herself to be yet another shining star in the galaxy of famous French organists. On our next Pipedreams program, she steps beyond the shadow of her equally talented husband, Naji Hakim, to demonstrate her own gifts as interpretor, improvisor and composer. In recordings made in Washington DC and Saint Paul, Minnesota, and a few done at her church, Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Paris where she is titulaire, Ms. Dufourcet establishes herself as not just your average wife and mother, sharing a cross-section of music from the past century. She is a supremely assurred player and composer, as demonstrated through recital recordings and perceptive commentary. Celebrate Marie Bernadette Dufourcet-Hakim, our special guest, who makes you want to shout Viva la France!, which we do, this week on Pipedreams.

The goal of our next Pipedreams program is clear enough, discover exceptional women musicians and given them center stage. And so we shall, with Irmtraud Krueger marching around the sanctuary in Poligny, France, Kathleen Scheide playing her own composition in Boston, Dorothy Papadakos improvising to the songs of humpback whales at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, now isn’t THAT an image?! and Katharine Pardee responding to the muse of Sweelinck in Syracuse. Whether Under the Linden Green, or in the depths of the sea singing with humpback whales, talented women organists play for us, showing off a multiplicity of talents and tastes as we Cherchez les Femmes, and find them…this week on Pipedreams.

…the remarkable Marie-Claire Alain talks about the unique power of the compositions by her older brother and first teacher, Jehan Alain [1911-1940]. He wrote one of the best known, and most powerful organ scores of the 20th century, titled Litanies, and during his short life created an astonishing array of deeply communicative compositions. On our next Pipedreams program the works of Jehan Alain will be performed by an international array of soloists, including composer’s sister Marie-Claire. Jehan was the talented older brother, Marie-Claire the little black sheep whom he encouraged. Jehan was killed early in World War II, at the age of 29 and Marie-Claire has championed his music ever since, music which now the whole world knows. Mysterious, miraculous, the music of Jehan Alain, revealed to us by the woman who has championed it throughout her own remarkable international career. Marie-Claire Alain is our special guest for Alain on Alain, this week on Pipedreams.

Maybe it’s just a matter of doing things HIS way, or wanting to shake the dust off and step beyond hallowed tradition. On our next Pipedreams program, I visit with Swiss recitalist and composer Guy Bovet, for whom the organ offers every imaginable opportunity for expression and adventure. Whether in a beguiling tribute to the city of Salamanca, or the first inventory of the historic organs of Mexico, whether involved in an important restoration, or tickling us with a ‘rediscovered’ Mozart Bolero, or making pipes play jazz, Guy Bovet blends serious intentions and wry humor in a very special way. We’re never quite clear about his destination when we start out, but when you travel with a certain Swiss organist you’re guaranteed an adventure amidst historic instruments and unusual repertoire, all produced with rare insight and good humor. It’s a “Guy” Thing, this week on Pipedreams.

This is fair and pleasant music, grave yet rapturous, from the pen of Marcel Dupré, a collection of introspective Vespers Antiphons which began as improvisations and proved to be so compelling that he was commissioned to later write them down. On our next Pipedreams program, these and other such works by Benjamin Britten, Larry King, and William Mathias provide startling contrast to outspoken scores by Percy Whitlock, Daniel Gawthrop, Barbara Harbach, and Brent Weaver, where heraldic brilliance calls us to attention and involvement. It’s a program of contrasts, brilliant and subdued, theatrical and introspective, with instrumental and choral pieces dedicated to color and collective prayer. From the Cathedral in Mallaga to Trinity Church, Wall Street, delight in variety Fanfares and Antiphons, this week on Pipedreams.

The pipe organ offers a player a rainbow of sonorous hues from which to draw, and while our next Pipedreams program exploits such opportunity, we also deal with a different facet of color. During the past century, composers such as William Grant Still, Thomas Kerr, Ulysses Kay, and Florence Price have made sizeable, if sometimes unheralded, contributions to the concert repertoire of the king of instruments. Whether in abstract visions or classical forms, responding to main-stream themes or spiritual influences, theirs is an important voice, as you’ll discover listening to a dozen remarkable works recorded by James Abbington, David Oliver, Mark Miller, Lucius Weathersby, Mickey Thomas Terry, and friends. Color me intrigued by the richness and variety of music for pipe organ by African American composers. Is it a paradox that we experience the full range of color In Black and White? The African American impulse, this week on Pipedreams.

It’s a game of getting-to-know-you. First a few notes, then some others and before you know it, we’re into a new adventure in sound. For hundreds of years, players have explored the limits of their instruments and of their own techniques in works that evolved from the sheer tactile pleasure of pushing down the keys and seeing what happens. Marius Monnekendam in the Netherlands, Robert Elmore in the United States, Girolamo Frescobaldi of Italy, J.S. Bach in Germany and many others have written some of their most exciting music following this scheme. Tactile and tantalizing, our program explores four hundred years of repertoire, instruments from three centuries, and the delights of things done by hand. Better than a good massage, with a tingling sensation guaranteed, we Reach out and Touch the Art of the Toccata, this week on Pipedreams.

It’s about knowing both sides, when to hold back in thoughtfulness and when to rush impetuously forward, to know the heart of a piece beyond just the muscle. On our next Pipedreams, eight very aware young talents, recent award winners in a national competition, show us their stuff and tell us their dreams. The names of Michael Costello, Jeeyen Son, Svetlana Fiahkretdinova, Cara Dye, Todd Fickley, Tom Trenney, Grace Renaud, and Frederick Teardo may still be new to you but among them likely are some of the heroes of tomorrow. Whether in sweet serenity or soulful soaring, eight twenty-something young artists prove that the future’s been well-provided for by the talents they are husbanding today. Bask in their glow, Rising Stars, this week on Pipedreams.

We explore a world of opportunity on our next Pipedreams program. This is a kind of golden age, as never before has there been quite so much music available on compact disc. We’ll sample from among the most recent issues, including this delicious movement for violin, cello and organ by Rheinberger. We’ll also have the work of little-know Viennese composer Robert Fuchs, played at Saint Stefan’s Cathedral, Vienna, by Peter Planyavsky some Brahms Variations by Marcel Dupré, in a first recording, the latest from the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia, just a tantalizing taste, and pieces by Bach and his favorite pupil, Krebs, recorded very stylishly on historic instruments in Germany. From simple Bach for only two parts well, not SO simple to the sound of the largest functional musical instrument on the planet, we select from among the best new compact discs and provide you with a consumer’s alert. A review of what’s new, we’re Going on Record, this week on Pipedreams.

It was a meticulous craftsmanship and a perfectionist’s attitude that limited his lifetime compositional output to a mere dozen scores. On our next Pipedreams, we’ll show that while they are few in number, the compositions of Maurice Duruflé are like so many perfectly-polished jewels, core items in the organ repertoire. Along with his own works are interpretations of Bach, Handel, and Schumann in performances recorded at Soissons Cathedral, the National Shrine in Washington, DC, and Saint Thomas Church, New York, NY. Inspired by an abiding faith, a reference for Gregorian chant, and a love for the organ, he created a handful of masterpieces beloved equally by singers, players and listeners. Explore the exquisite art of Frenchman Maurice Duruflé, in A Centenary Tribute, this week on Pipedreams.