It’s all so familiar but also the beginning of an uncharted adventure. This week’s Pipedreams program explores wedding music in its broader implications. We’ll have traditional processionals, historic works in celebration of a joy-filled day, exotic pieces from Finland and the Czech Republic songs and ballads about true, perfect and wondrous love, an anthem about an amiable dwelling place, and even a warning lest fools rush in. For June brides or newlyweds at any time of the year, it’s music which proclaims This is the Day.
The impulse is inexorable, and it’s not just the organist’s feet that want to move out. Our next Pipedreams program celebrates the ceremonial and the aerobic opportunities of music in the manner of a march. Some pieces have the expected pomp and circumstance, but others are majestic, or joyous, or somber, or even side-splittingly funny. Siamese children, archers, marionettes, three kings, and even penguins get into the act, as we step right out according to rank and file.
Whether stepping out to a little number by Bach, or a grand romp by Sousa or Elgar, we’ll get our legs and ears in shape and take advantage of an energy which makes you want to move. Ready? Start with your left left-right organ music for a parade. We March Forth!, this week on Pipedreams.
One of the late romantic masterworks for orchestra is a symphony by Cesar Franck. And one of the great achievements of the 19th century French organ school was this same Cesar Franck’s introduction of a symphonic manner of writing for the pipe organ. But the Symphonic Organ and Franck’s D-minor Symphony are not usually on the same page… that is until our next Pipedreams broadcast when Jane Parker-Smith and Thomas Murray apply their magic to a remarkably effective transcription of the piece. Other items qualify as recent discoveries, some hundred years after the fact, and one familiar score may surprise you with its unconventional conclusion.
They don’t teach it this way in the conservatory. Indeed, everything about the work of this estimable French composer is more than a bit out of the ordinary. It’s either been arranged, newly discovered, or radically transcribed. All of it’s enjoyable, and Franckly Unexpected. The music of Cesar Franck, 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.
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.
Music that stirs the soul and produces provocative evocations of scenes from Holy Week.
Walking down the aisle to Here Comes the Bride is not as standard as you may think. Thankfully, whether the occasion be a posh ceremony or a simple rustic celebration, the ever versatile pipe organ can provide music for every sort of wedding.
A colorful collection both from and inspired by the pipe organ’s earliest known repertoire.
Or Woman Composers for the Organ, a survey of some interesting works by some interesting people.
These brilliant denizens of heaven evoke their rolls as travelers’ guide, focus of prayers and wishes, and symbol of nations, while providing us with a star-studded musical celebration.
We ring out the old and ring in the new with reflections on happenings in 2006 and some projections for the future in 2007.
…history has been slow to acknowledge the evidence that women composers have accomplished plenty.
…a three-century collective of composers provides a colorful package for our holiday pleasure.
…whether in simple variations on a sacred hymn tune or complex counterpoint around a new-made melody, composers always respond to the lyric muse.
This week we’ll listen to musical creations based on both familiar and newly formed tunes. One of the most common forms of composition for the King of Instruments, composers have frequently demonstrated their craftsmanship with these lyric morsels.
…in celebration of the ’founding‘ of the Christian Church, music on themes for Pentecost.
…back in the depths of history, the number ‘7’ was deemed lucky, or at least significant, and our music proves the point.
…a celebration of composers and performers, in anticipation of International Women’s Day [observed on March 8].
…getting in step with some bracing tunes that will keep you in good spirits and on the move!
…as prelude to the next Pipedreams Tour (May 23-June 4), this selection of instruments featured in our itinerary.
…a bicentennial reflection upon the art of one of the most popular and powerful Parisian organists of the 19th century, Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wely (1817-1869).
…for the seventh day of the seventh month, scores by Widor, Rheinberger and Guilmant offer players and listeners a rainbow of tonal possibility!
…despite that ruthless Biblical reference, today we follow the lead of the great composer of organ symphonies, Charles-Marie Widor.
Grandeur and majesty. Passion and poetry. These are the elements of a new musical style that evolved in Paris in the latter 19th-century which revolutionized the art of the organ. On our next Pipedreams broadcast, we’ll hear two ‘firsts’ - two symphonic works for solo organ by Charles-Marie Widor and his pupil and, ultimately, competitor, Louis Vierne. Inspired by the sonorities of the lavish new instruments designed by master organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, both Widor, who was the first to call a composition an organ symphony, and Vierne created musical masterpieces that are both a challenge to play and a joy to hear.
passionate playing of powerful and poetic works by a composer famous for an almost daemonic virtuosity and his imaginative exploitation of the organ’s resources.
