Herbert Howells - Piano Concerto No. 2; String Concerto; Three Dances

"What a sea change there has been in public opinion in the last ten years or so which has made the recording of the music here not only possible but desirable. Two of the works have not been heard since their first performances (Three Dances, 1915; Piano Concerto, 1925) until 1989 when the present write put together a 'Composer of the Week' series on Radio 3, concentrating for the first time on the orchestral music. It was a revelation.

"Herbert Howells was the most brilliant student of his generation at the Royal College of Music and was dubbed his 'son in music' by the notoriously difficult Sir Charles Stanford, his composition teacher. Sir Arthur Bliss, who went to the RCM a year after Howells having done a music degree at Cambridge, remembers:

"'Howells had the outstanding talent. His quickly written scores, showing a beautiful resolute calligraphy, with their technical maturity simply disheartened me. I had to learn one of the most painful lessons of my life, that there are other who are born with more gifts than oneself; no amount of self-confidence can at heart convince one to the contrary.'

"What is the reason for the neglect over so many years of almost all of Howells's orchestral music? The answer, perhaps, is twofold. Firstly, Howells was notoriously sensitive to criticism. An adverse word from any source would trigger the immediate withdrawal of a work from circulation. Why this was so is difficult to say. Probably the answer lies in his being put on a pedestal by Stanford where he was led to believe that everything he did was good. When subsequently he was prey to the whims and prejudices of the lions' den of the critical press he did not have the inner self-confidence and strength to cope with their claws. Secondly, where he once said 'there's no room for symphonic lengths these days' (feeling, perhaps, that the concert-going public's attention span was not capable of taking a major new symphonic work), in reality it was not his way and that was just what the public did want.

"Of the three works recorded here, two - the Piano Concerto and the Concerto for String Orchestra - are major three-movement works. The 'Three Dances', on the other hand, are delightful miniatures, written in 1915 in relatively carefree student days (relatively, because the Great War was already a year old and Howells, through ill health which nearly killed him in 1917, was exempted from active service). They were composed for a young fellow-student George Whittaker, a highly gifted violinist who had entered the College aged only eleven. Certainly the music has no hint of the momentous events beginning to take shaep and which would fundamentally affect one of his closest friends, Ivor Gurney, and kill a number of others. The Dances are, in fact, extremely sunny pieces, not yet imbued with the Howellsian pathos which grew to dominate his mode of speech. To this end they are as yet uncharacteristic, speaking more of his teacher's influence than of his own intuitive nature which was still to come to its maturity. Putting that aside, however, what lovely pieces they are! The first, quite big-scale, is almost a gypsy dance with some brilliantly colourful orchestration laid out for large forces. In the manuscript Howells writes at the end that he finished the score in bed. It is nice to know that student habits don't change over the years!

"The second Dance has on of the most beguiling tunes of the period. To some extent it is the change in his later music away from writing to a tune to creating long-breathed, melismatic phrases, which creates the aural problem for the unsophisticated listener who wants the 'anchorage' which a regular-metre melody gives. Here, though, there is no problem. Why this Dance alone did not become a classic 'pop' of the period is difficult to understand, though it is probably bound up with Howells's reticence and his impatience, as a student, to be getting on with the next project.

"The last Dance is, by contrast, short and furious, providing an exquisite foil to the others. Here is Howells, already, aged only twenty-three, a consummately skilled orchestrator, a highly gifted creator of atmosphere (one of the most important features of his mature style) and having a considerable skill with both form and melody.

"Ten years on from the composition of those Dances Howells was a familiar name. He had been thrust into the limelight in 1916 with the publication of his Piano Quartet in A minor under the auspices of the Carnegie Trust. Amongst the seven composers chosen to have works published, Howells's was the only unknown name, and his was the only piece of chamber music. The Quartet was also the first to be published.

"In these early years it appeared that nothing could stop Howells's meteoric rise to stardom. Music flowed from him in an unstoppable flood of inspiration; orchestral works, a remarkable series of chamber works including three String Quartets (the Third, 'In Gloucestershire', recorded on Hyperion CDA66139) and a Clarinet Quintet (recorded on Hyperion CDA 66428), music for piano, for organ, three violin sonatas, solo songs including 'King David' - one of the classics of the period - and works for chorus and orchestra including a Gloucester Three Choirs Festival commission in 1922 at the behest of Elgar, called 'Sine Nomine', which only had its second performance this year (1992), also at Gloucester.

"The came a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society for a 'Piano Concerto' for performance in the Queen's Hall, London, in 1925. Sargent was to conduct (his debut with the Society) and Harold Samuel (famous for his Bach recitals) was to be soloist. The first signs of a problem arose when Samuel received the score and found that he heartily disliked the work. The composer Howard Ferguson, who was a pupil of Samuel's and lived in his house at the time, remembers helping Samuel to learn the work by being the 'orchestra' on a second piano. He recalls that Samuel tried to get the Society to release him from the engagement which they refused to do, and so the performance went ahead as planned.

"It was a mark of Howells's burgeoning reputation that the performance was widely anticipated in London musical circles and that the programme in which it was placed included recent works by composers of the previous generation - Vaughan Williams's 'Pastoral Symphony', Ireland's 'Mai Dun', and music by Bax and Berners. However, the performance was to all intents and purposes a disaster. Certainly, for Howells, it contained the seeds of self-destruction. As a critic noted:

"'Our Royal and ancient Philharmonic Society has given many first performances of works by the world's greatest musicians, but the event to which I refer was specially remarkable because at the conclusion of the Concerto there was the usual spontaneous applause, but on this occasion mixed with angry shouts of disapproval from one gentleman in the audience. For a few seconds there was a shocked silence, and then the applause broke out with a renewed force as a sort of counter-protest against the unseemly conduct of the gentleman who evidently did not like music of a modernity unpalatable to his taste.'

"The reception of this work caused Howells to freeze as a composer. Although the Concerto was at proof stage with the publishers he instantly withdrew it and virtually stopped composing for some ten years, writing in the interim only very small-scale pieces and revising some early compositions.

"All this was, of course, a huge over-reaction to a histrionic display which, in any country other than England, would have been regarded as par for the course and merely amusing. To the oversensitive Howells, though, it was a nightmare. Late in his life the pianist Hilary Macnamara persuaded him to have another look at it. He began revising the work but soon put it aside again.

"The Concerto is a big-scale three-movement work which is designed on a very unusual ground plan (which was possibly what led to the outburst). Howells organized three movements as a huge sonata-form structure with the first movement acting as the exposition, the slow movement as the development, and the last movement as a modified recapitulation (all the movements are linked). To this extent the constant referral back to the first subject (a short, diatonic tune) can become monotonous unless sympathetically interpreted. The problems at the first performance were exacerbated by unsympathetic performers. This must have come across to any with ears to hear.

"In describing the form of the work, Howells also hints at something deeper which was to become such a hallmark of his style later on: 'What always matters to a modern is to express a complex mood. Now for that, sonata form is not always suitable, or a sonata for as hitherto accepted.' This 'complex mood' was something which Vaughan Williams brought to perfection in his utterly original 'Pastoral Symphony'. Howells described this more fully in a penetrating article in 'Music and Letters' in April 1922:

"'He neither depicts nor describes. It is not his concern to 'make the universe his box of toys.' He builds up a great mood, insistent to an unusual degree, but having in itself far more variety than a merely slight acquaintance with it would suggest. In matter and manner it is entirely personal... You may not like the Symphony's frame of mind; but there it is, strong and courageous; it is the truth of the work, and out of it would naturally arise whatever risk it has run of being publicly cold-shouldered.'

"Howells's Second Piano Concerto is full of drama and lyricism. He intended it to be 'a diatonic affair, with deliberate tunes all the way [...] jolly in feeling, and attempting to get to the point as quickly as maybe.' Certainly it is a 'tour de force' and is quite unlike any other Concerto of the period. With its brilliant use of the orchestra and its colourful effects it must have sounded very modern indeed to that audience on the 27 April 1925.

"In 1935 Howells's only son died of polio, aged only nine. It was another and far more devastating moment in his life. Emotionally paralysed for some time, he began to pick up composition against as a means of purging the ghost of his son. Before the boy's death Howells had been composing a work for string orchestra to commemorate the recent death of Elgar. In 1938 he completed it, giving it the title 'Concerto for String Orchestra'. Not all of it was new: the first movement was an extensive re-working of the ebullient 'Preludio' from an early string orchestra Suite of 1917, the second movement of which became a separate work - the 'Elegy' for viola, string quartet and strings, one of the composer's most beautiful orchestral works. The second movement jointly commemorates Elgar and Michael Howells. Howells called it 'submissive and memorial in its intention and purpose.' The third movement balances the first in its energy and drive.

"Howells described the inspiration behind the work:

"'It was meant to be a modest expression of the abiding spell of music for strings, and the be, in that genus, in humble relationship to two supreme works, Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia, and Elgar's Introduction and Allegro. In 1910 at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral I was present at the first performance of the Fantasia. Within days, and for the first time, I hard the Introduction and Allegro. I was at the time 17; deeply impressionable. 25 years later, again at Gloucester, walking with Sir Edward Elgar in the cathedral precincts, he talked quietly and earnestly of the technique of writing for strings. One name dominated his talk, George Frederick Handel.'

"The death of Howells's son ironically unlocked the frozen powers which had stopped him composing after the debacle of the Second Piano Concerto. He went on to write his undisputed masterpiece, 'Hymnus Paradisi', and the whole emphasis of his work shifted from music for the concert hall to music either for the church, or choral music with non-liturgical religious texts such as the 'Stabat Mater' written in the mid-fifties. This (the church music) is the music by which he is best known. Recordings such as this serve to redress the imbalance which has existed for years in the appreciation of Howells's output by giving us the opportunity to reassess these major orchestral scores through which Howells's career developed and his musical personality reached maturity. (Paul Spicer. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, Kathryn Scott, Malcolm Stewart

1. String Concerto: I. Allegro, Assai Vivace

2. String Concerto: II. Quasi Lento. Teneramente

3. String Concerto: III. Allegro Vivo. Ritmico E Giocoso

4. Three Dances, Op. 7: I. Giocoso Molto

5. Three Dances, Op. 7: II. Quasi Lento, Quieto

6. Three Dances, Op. 7: III. Molto Allegro

7. Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor: I. Allegro (Hard And Bright) -

8. Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor: II. Poco Lento, Calmato -

9. Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor: III. Allegro (Hard And Bright Again)

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Duke Ellington - "...And His Mother Called Him Bill"

"When Billy Strayhorn died of cancer in 1967, Duke Ellington was devastated. His closest friend and arranger had left his life full of music and memories. As a tribute, Ellington and his orchestra almost immediately began recording a tribute to Strayhorn, using the late arranger's own compositions and charts. The album features well-known and previously unrecorded Strayhorn tunes that showcased his range, versatility, and, above all, the quality that Ellington admired him most for: his sensitivity to all of the timbral, tonal, and color possibilities an orchestra could bring to a piece of music. The set opens with a vehicle for Johnny Hodges called 'Snibor', written in 1949. A loose blues tune, its intervals showcase Hodges against a stinging I-IV-V backdrop and turnaround, with a sweeping set of colors in the brass section before Cootie Williams takes a break and hands it back to Hodges to take out. The melancholy 'Blood Count' was written in 1967 for the band's Carnegie Hall concert. It proved to be his final composition and chart. Hodges again gets the call and blows deep, low, and full of sadness and even anger. The music is moody, poignant, and full of poise, expressing a wide range of feelings as memories from different periods in the composers' and bandleaders' collective careers. Given all the works Strayhorn composed, this one - with its muted trumpet section set in fours against Hodges' blues wailing - is both wistful and chilling. Also included here is a remake of 1951's 'Rock Skippin' at the Blue Note', in a spicy, funky version with a shimmering cymbal ride from Sam Woodyard and a punched up, bleating Cootie Williams solo as well as one from Jimmy Hamilton on clarinet, smoothing out the harmonic edges of the brass section (which features a ringing break from John Sanders). In cut time, the tune shuffles in the groove with Ellington accenting on every eight as the brass and reeds mix it up joyously. There are two versions of 'Lotus Blossom'. Ellington claimed it was the piece Strayhorn most liked to hear him play. The LP version is a quiet, restrained, meditative rendition played solo by Ellington, with the most subtle and yet emotional nuances he ever presented on a recording as a pianist. Finally, closing the album is a bonus track, a trio version played in a whispering tone with only baritone saxophonist Harry Carney and bassist Aaron Bell accompanying Ellington. The piece was supposedly recorded as the band was packing up to leave. Its informality and soulful verve feel like they are an afterthought, an unwillingness to completely let go, a eulogy whose final words are questions, elegantly stated and met with only the echo of their last vibrations ringing in an empty room, full of wondering, longing, and helplessness, but above all the point of the questions themselves: 'Is this enough?' or 'Can there ever be enough to pay an adequate tribute to this man?' They are interesting questions, because only five years later we would all be saying the same thing about Ellington. For a man who issued well over 300 albums, this set is among his most profoundly felt and very finest recorded moments." (Review of the Bluebird re-issue by Thom Jurek. From AllMusic. See here.)

1. Boo-Dah

2. U.M.M.G.

3. Blood Count

4. Smada

5. Rock Skippin' At The Blue Note

6. Rain Check

7. Midriff

8. My Little Brown Book

9. Lotus Blossom

10. Snibor

11. After All

12. All Day Long

13. Lotus Blossom

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Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

"Despite being born in the same year, Nielsen and Sibelius, the twin peaks of Nordic symphonism, pursued wholly independent paths. Where Sibelius's First Symphony (1899, rev. 1900) took Borodin and Tchaikovsky as its starting point, Nielsen's (1891-94) paid homage to Berlioz, Grieg and Svendsen. And while Sibelius gradually stripped away elements of Romanticism and went ever deeper into elemental representations of Nature and movement, Nielsen accumulated, explored ever wider horizones, and rather than moving away from his roots made symphonic dramas from confronting them with new, often inimical forces.

"The Dane's Third Symphony (1911) celebrated a conglomeration of positive values - freedom, creative energy, oneness with Nature, and, in the finale, what Nielsen himself dubbed the 'healthy morale' of the ordinary working man - all under the umbrella title of 'Sinfonia espansiva'. At its core, his next symphony, 'The Inextinguishable' (1914-16) is a defence of those same values against elements that threaten their very existence. By the time of its composition, Europe was being torn apart by a war in which Denmark remained neutral but which caused Nielsen to question the 'national feeling' he had previously regarded as wholesome and which he now likened to a 'kind of spiritual syphilis'. There were conflicts, too, in his personal life. His marriage, to the prominent sculptress Ann-Marie Brodersen, was entireing a period of turmoil, brought about by the revelation of his infidelities; and on 30th May 1914 he resigned his position as assistant conductor at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, thereby becoming a freelance musician for more or less the first time in over twenty years. For all these reasons Nielsen felt compelled to re-examine his values as a composer and human being, and in this respect 'The Inextinguishable' is a classic mid-life-crisis piece.

"On 3rd May 1914, Carl Nielsen wrote in a state of high agitation to his wife: 'I have an idea for a new work, which has no programme but which is meant to express what we understand by the life-urge or life-manifestation; that's to say: everything that moves, that craves life, that can be called neither good nor evil, neither high nor low, neither great nor small, but simply: 'That which is life' or 'That which craves life' - I mean, no definite idea about anything 'grandiose' or 'fine and delicate' or about warm or cold (powerful maybe) but simply Life and Movement, but varied, very varied, but holding together, and as though always flowing in one large movement, in a single stream. I need a word or a short title to say it all.'

"The word he was looking for was 'Inextinguishable'. But he was not to find it until he had completed the symphony nearly two years after that semi-coherent outburst of enthusiasm. His thoughts crystallised in a short preface to the score: 'With the title 'The Inextinguishable' the composer has sought to indicate in one word what only music has the power to express in full: 'The Elemental Will of Life'. Music -is- Life and, like it, inextinguishable.' And in 1920 Nielsen sent his Dutch composer-conductor friend Julius Röntgen an explanatory note that further clarified his intentions: 'If the whole world was destroyed, Nature would once again begin to beget new life and push forward with the strong and fine forces that are to be found in the very stuff of existence... These 'inextinguishable' forces are what I have tried to represent.'

"In Danish 'Det Uudslukkelige' is a neuter noun, non an adjectival description. So we should think of this not as a hubristic Inextinguishable Symphony, but rather as one whose subject matter is That which is Inextinguishable. Nielsen might almost as well have named it the Life Force, as Bernard Shaw put it, or 'élan vital', in a formulation popularised around the time of its composition by the philosopher Henri Bergson.

"The turbulence of the opening bars immediately suggests how much is at stake, as the strings and woodwin view with one another and brass and timpani strive to maintain law and order. When this tumult subsides, a long-drawn clarinet theme in winding Sibelian thirds seems to come from another world ('not quite like me', as once Nielsen remarked). Rather than remaining merely a haven for escapist reverie, this theme will prove highly adaptable, marking out its Darwinian fitness for eventual survival.

"In the pastoral-idyllic slow movement the woodwind behave as an idealised village band, charmingly not quite sure whether they should be playing two or three beats to the bar. Here, one senses, are the values of simplicity and openness the symphony needs to defend. The tensely dramatic third movement then begins with a passionate accompanied recitative for the violins, soaring over timpani and lower strings, 'like an eagle on the wind' according to the composer; succeeding contrasts between passionate declamation and hymn-like serenity are eventually swallowed up in a radiant climax. In the finale, launched by a torrent of string scales in the manner of Beethoven's third 'Leonora' Overture, the element of antagonism resurfaces. Two sets of timpani, spatially separated, battle it out with the rest of the orchestra, before the triumphant return of the first movement's Sibelian clarinet theme, no blazened across the entire orchestra in searing affirmation.

"After its enthusiastically received première on 1st February 1916, 'The Inextinguishable' rapidly established itself as a milestone in the Nordic symphonic repertoire, one that was frequently called upon to conduct. During these years he was living an itinerant life, hoping to re-cement his marriage but for the time being excluded from the family home in Copenhagen. In between major symphonic projects, much of his energy was devoted to a lavish staging of 'Aladdin', which demanded some 90 minutes of incidental music, and his representation of its polarities of Good and Evil, as well as its oriental setting, gave him new impetus for symphonic explorations (witness the music for 'The Market at Ispahan', which he composed for four discrete mini-orchestras in four different keys).

"For the 'Fifth Symphony' we have no preliminary statements of the kind Nielsen wrestly with apropos 'The Inextinguishable'. But he did reflect with hindsight on its content. Interviews for a Copenhagen newspaper just before the première on 24th January 1922, he was asked about the meaning of his new work. Using terms echoed by composers down the ages, he responded cagily: 'Long explanations and indications as to what music 'represents' are just evil; they distract the listener.' Pressed as to whether the Great War had affected his composition, he again deflected the question, replying that although he was not conscious of any such influence, 'One thing is certain: not one of us is the same as we were before the war. So maybe so!'

"As so many composers have discovered, these evasive tactics left the Fifth Symphony defenceless against critics eager to supply their own interpretations. Some related the extraordinarily vivid drama of the piece to his music for 'Aladdin', hearing pastoral dream-world and Arabian marches in the first movement of the symphony. And one of Nielsen's staunchest supporters found himself thoroughly repelled, calling the work a 'Sinfonie filmatique', this dirty trenches-music [...] this clenched first in the face of a defenceless, novelty snobbish, titillation-sick public [...] who lovingly lick the hand stained with the blood of their own noses!' Two years later in Stockholm, a large section of the audience walked out, in protest at the cacophony of the first movement, while a proportion of the remainder tried to hiss down the performance.

"Few among those early listeners could have guessed that Nielsen's Fifth Symphony would one day mark his posthumous international breakthrough - which can be dated quite precisely to the 1950 Edinburgh Festival - and go on to be hailed as one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century (not least by the celebrated Mahler scholar and broadcaster Deryck Cooke).

"Nielsen did in fact leave a few more sporadic clues as to his preoccupations while composing the work. These all have to do with primordial oppositions. At the end of his pencil draft score he wrote the motto: 'Dark, resting forces - Awakened forces', which could apply equally well to the contrast between the two main sections of the first movement and to that between the two movements themselves. He told a confidant that it was 'something very primitive I wanted to express: the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good. A title such as 'Dreams and Deeds' could maybe sum up the inner picture I had in front of my eyes when composing.' And to his newspaper interviewer he explained that the symphony was ultimately concerned with the same elemental opposition as in his previous three, namely 'resting forces in contrast to active ones'.

"If 'The Inextinguishable' enshrined a conflict between Nielsen's essentially positive outlook on life and fearsome odds stacked against it, the Fifth Symphony revisits this arena with an even more comprehensive symphonic mastery.

"The first movement falls into two large sections. Nielsen's 'resting forces' express themselves initially as a kind of wandering indifference. He once described this state as 'Vegetative Nature', and the title 'Vegetative' actually stands at the head of his pencil draft score. Pairs of bassoons, and later horns, flutes and clarinets, drift aimlessly around an oscillating viola line that waits at first passively, then more anxiously, for something to happen. That line reacts to shivers on the cymbal as the wandering melody transfers to strings. An increasing sense of foreboding is registered by harsh accents in the cellos, and a kind of paralysis gradually steals over the music. The stage is set for the entrance of the side drum. From this point the struggle between conflicting forces ebbs and flows, eventually reaching stalemate and dying away under stabbing repeated notes on violins and celesta.

"As if waking from a bad dream, a warm G major tune breaks in on violas and cellos, supported by bassoons and horns. This unfolds in two glorious waves of increasingly contrapuntal activity, reaching an ecstatic climax. However, what promises to be a similarly positive third wave is soon clutched by fearful reminisces, and a mounting sense of alarm takes over. Woodwind and strings hurl what Nielsen called the 'evil motif' - a transformation of the violas' wave line - at one another, and at the high point the side drum returns at an unrelated faster tempo, with the instruction to disturb the orchestra at all costs. Pandemonium ensues, until a tidal wave of G major engulfs all the combatants and a battle-scarred tranquility concludes the first movement.

"The second movement begins with what the pioneering Nielsen scholar Robert Simpson aptly called 'a fount of regenerative energy'. At first this music seems to be irresistable in its onward sweep, but eventually it too succumbs to a terrifying loss of energy. That this has happened without the presence of the first movement's obvious tokens of ill-will - such as the percussion, the skirling clarinet and the dinning side drum - is all the more disheartening. The implication is that an even greater effort of will-power than in the first movement will be needed in order to regain a positive frame of mind.

"Nielsen's strategy is first of all to let evil forces rip, which he does in a fugue from hell that starts quietly on the violins but soon develops a nightmarish momentum and eventually blows itself to smithereens. The air having finally been cleared, another fugue begins, again on the violins but this time slowly and calmly transofrming the opening theme of the second movement and thinking its way through to enlightenment. It only remains for the 'fount of energy' to return and to find a way to avoid its previous path to ruin. This having been achieved, along with the revelation of the key of E flat major (also the key of the magnificent conclusion to the recent Fifth Symphony by Nielsen's Finnish neighbour, Sibelius) the final pages hold the banner of the Life Force triumphantly aloft. (David Fanning, 2013. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': I. Allegro –

2. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': II. Poco Allegretto –

3. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': III. Poco Adagio Quasi Andante –

4. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': IV. Allegro

5. Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 FS 97: I. Tempo Giusto –

6. Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 FS 97: II. Allegro – Presto – Andante Un Poco Tranquillo – Allegro

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Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 2 & 6

"Nielsen was one of life's people watchers. From the time of his rustic upbringing on the island of Funen he was a talented mimic (a gift he seems to have inherited from his father), and he became known as a marvellous conversationalist and raconteur. His compulsive interest in all that was robust and healthy in human nature, no matter if that meant rough edges or strongly differing views from his own, also inspired him to some of his finest music.

"No single work exemplifies Nielsen's gift for musical empathy morte thrillingly than his 'Second Symphony'. It dates from 1902-02, a time when he was earning his living mainly as a somewhat frustrated second violinist in the orchestra of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. The origins of the work, as he explained in a programme note near the end of his life, were in an allegorical picture he came across in a country inn, illustrating the Four Temperaments - the moods determined by the mixture of fluids in the body, at least according to medical theory with roots in the Ancient Greeks and Romans and still commonly believed up to the early 1800s. Imbalance between these fluids could supposedly create a disposition towards anger (choler), apathy (phlegm), sadness (melancholy) or carefree abandon (sanguinity). The comically exaggerated visual images of those characteristics apparently stayed with Nielsen and he soon saw their potential to map on the four movements of the traditional symphony.

"In the painting the Choleric temperament was apparently shown as a swash-buckling horse-rider: 'his eyes were bulging out of his head, his hair streamed wildly around his face, so distorted with rage and diabolical hatred that I could not help bursting out laughing'. Nielsen's symphonic equivalent is no laughing matter, however. A fiery Berliozian 'allegro', marked from the outset by slashing off-beat accents and rushing scale passages, its lyrical contrasts are like episodes in which the main character regrets his wildness without being able to prevent its return. Something close to this scenario would serve Nielsen again a quarter of a century later as the basis for his Clarinet Concerto.

"In complete contrast, the second movement, the Phlegmatic, is so easy-paced that it nearly falls asleep: 'I visualized a young fellow whose real inclination was to lie where the birds sing, where the fish glide noiselessly through the water, where the sun warms and the wind strokes mildly round one's curls.' Anyone who knows Nielsen's genial autobiography, 'My Childhood on Funen', will realise how close such an image was to his own nature, or at least to one part of it. In this movement, especially in the lazy undulating triads of the middle section, is contained the seed for the kind of inertia that would eventually take on a very different aspect: as a life-threatening - indeed life-on-earth-threatening - force in Nielsen's later symphonies.

"Next comes the Melancholic temperament, which like the Phlegmatic has little by way of contrast in its personality, other than a gravely beautiful, resigned episode in the middle. Again like its Phlegmatic counterpart, the movement becomes increasingly static, until, in the composer's words 'the parts intertwine like the threads of a net'. Even so, Nielsen was incapable of drawing anything other than a rounded character-portrait, and he give his 'heavy, melancholy man' a mitigating quality of stoical nobility from the outset. Eventually the music find its way to a calm and touching self-knowledge.

"Psychological progress of some such kind also underpins the Sanguine finale. This begins as the sketch of a man who 'storms thoughtlessly on in the belief that the whole world belongs to him, and that roast pigeons will fly into his mouth without work or bother'. However, 'Just once it seems that he has encountered something really serious; at least he meditates over something that is alien to his own nature, and it seems to affect him, so that while the final march may be happy and bright, it is still more dignified and not as silly and smug as some his previous bursts of activity.' In musical terms this is where Nielsen's famous 'progressive tonality' kicks in, as the movement - and indeed the entire symphony - ends in a brighter key than the one in which it began, as if to symbolise that adventure and self-transformation may be even higher values than empathy.

"In the post-Great War era, Nielsen's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies brought him the greatest measure of professional recognition he ever enjoyed in his lifetime. Critics in Scandinavia who had been troubled by what they saw as a veil of wilful experimentation in his earlier works were now, paradoxically, bowled over by these far more challenging masterpieces. Perhaps they got the point - and perhaps Nielsen himself made it easier for them to get the point - that what they had been bothered about was actually a deliberate negative polarity in an abstract human drama, rather than any kind of weakness or 'Schadenfreude'. Music of tough-minded, recalcitrant, even rebarbative kind was simply Nielsen's way of enshrining the struggles he perceived to be at the core of existence. Given what the First World War had done for the moral climate in Europe, that message was no hard to mistake.

"However, for the composer himself, the edge was taken off his creative triumphs by the realisation that he was not making the international headway he felt he deserved. He found little to admire in the European musical scene in the 1920s, with its extremes of hedonism and self-abnegation. And to make matters worse, his health was being undermined by heart problems that first manifested themselves seriously after his intense work on the Fifth Symphony. In any case, his abiding instinct for adventure dictated that his next symphony would have to move to a different arena. But where to, precisely, given that he had so recently scaled such mighty peaks?

"His first thought was, in effect, to take his cue from the work he had been doing for more than a decade in the area of folk-popular song. Accordingly, as he wrote to one of his daughters in August 1924, he envisaged a work that would be 'quite idyllic in character, beyond all time-bound taste and fashion... like the old 'a cappella' musicians'. But Nielsen was never one for planning out the precise route in advance, and this time his journey took him to regions far removed from the opening bars, with their tinkling glockenspiel, genial woodwind scales and childlike violins over tick-tock oboes and bassoons.

"In an intervew published two days before the first performance on 11th December 1925, he was asked about the title of the symphony. 'I've named it 'Sinfonia semplice',' he replied, 'because the main character is in a lighter vein than my other symphonies - there are merry things in it.' The interviewer pressed him further, no doubt because the composer had been in the news that year: at the time of the national celebrations for his 60th birthday, he had made unexpectedly cynical pronouncements on the career of a composer. Nielsen was adamant: 'The symphony has nothing whatsoever to do with my states of mind. What I experience in life never directly affects my music.' But he went on to give what may be an important clue to the tone of the symphony: 'It's natural for us to long for what we don't have.' In other words, the 'Sinfonia semplice' is not so much a simple symphony - far from it - but rather one that longs for a state of simplicity, more particularly for a return to the state of its opening bars.

"The symphony's final movement is, in fact, one of Nielsen's most tragic and full-worked out musical dramas, for all that it is expressed in a twelve-minute time-span and in highly economical texture. Each of its half-dozen main ideas is beguilingly innocent on initial presentation, but each is brutalised in the central phase of the movement, culminating in a full-scale panic attack and an agonisingly prolonged dissonance on horns and woodwin. This is, in effect, as anti-heroic a symphonic movement as anything in Shostakovich - who was composing his First Symphony at precisely the same time, but who almost certainly did not know Nielsen's music until much later in life.

"If this first movement is disturbing, what follows is even more so. A self-styled Humoresque, the second movement's prevailing tone is sardonic, yet not so obviously so that Nielsen felt it could speak for itself. In one and the same interview, two days before the premier in December 1925, he stressed that the symphony protrayed 'purely musical problems', yet then immediately contradicted himself, describing the percussion waking up the other instrumnts, which proceed to play 'modern music', arousing their distaste and later the contempt of the trombone, which plays yawning glissandi, as if to say 'Baa, baby food!', before the all fall peacefully asleep again. What is alarming about this satirical picture is a sense that the composer's own voice is virtually absent, having been so integral to the drama of the first movement.

"Then it seems that the slow movement may redress the balance. Nielsen's 'serious proposition' is an intense Bartókian fugue in the strings - the opening repeated notes harking right back to the first bar of the symphony. This is the sort of writing he had deployed so inspiringly in the second movement of the Fifth Symphony, to absorb negativity and to prepare the ground for a final burst of life-affirmation. This time, however, everything collapses and the music becomes entangled in a mesh of its own fevered anxiety - like the Melancholic Temperament but at a higher, existential level. The best it can hope for is a pale reconciliation to the status quo, blearily expressed in the closing bars.

"Before composing the finale Nielsen declared it would be a 'a variations work, a cosmic chasos, who atoms [...] clarify and unite to form a globe'. Yet again, however, the concept darkened as he worked on it. The variations are certainly there, and in the middle of the movement something very much like cosmic chaos indeed comes across the music. But the envisaged gathering into wholeness encounters obstacles that for once in his symphonic career prove insuperable. As the composer confided to a friend, the bizarre variation with tuba and percussion represents 'death knocking at the door', and the concluding fanfares therefore cannot be other than a death-defying gesture. Finally the two bassoons are left honking out their lowest note with all their might. Thus the greatest life-affirmer in the 20th-century symphonic tradition ends his last symphony by symbolically giving death the finger." (David Fanning, 2014. From the liner notes.) 

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': I. Allegro Colleric

2. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': II. Allegro Comodo E Flemmatico

3. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': III. Andante Malincolico

4. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': IV. Allegro Sanguineo

5. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': I. Tempo Giusto

6. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': II. Humoresque. Allegretto

7. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': III. Proposta Seria. Adagio

8. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': IV. Theme And Variations. Allegro

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Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3

"Nielsen's childhood, so eloquently evoked in the memoirs he published after his 60th birthday, played a formative role in his musical personality on many levels. It gave him enduring respect for the values of ordinary country folk, delight in the endless variety of nature and relish for the inner strength of his early musical loves, Bach and Mozart. Later, his training at the Royal Conservatoire in Copenhagen, principally as a violinist, nurtured his early compositional efforts, especially in the fields of chamber music and song.

"But so far as larger forms such as the symphony are concerned, it was his employment in the Royal Opera Orchestra from 1889 that gave him the material basis and his scholarship-funded travels in Europe from 1890-91 that provided the decisive inspiration. In the course of that study-trip he began to sense the kind of orchestral music he wanted to write (emulating the likes of Beethoven and Brahms) and also the kind he didn't (essentially anything that smacked of self-indulgence of gratuitous effect).

"Two 'upbeats' preceded the symphony he finally set to work on in the summer of 1891. One was a complete symphonic first movement, composed in 1888 and named (not by Nielsen himself, it seems) 'Symphonic Rhapsody', for its delayed first performance. Despite its athletic, swinging triple-time motion, which was to become a hallmark of several of his mature symphonies, he agreed with some of the critics that this piece was not strong enough to stand alone, and he made no more than a concept - but an ambitious one - for a symphony with the programme 'From earth you have come; to earth you shall return'.

"Nielsen's definitive 'First Symphony', which took shape over a period of two and a half years, is far removed from such grandiose ambitions, or indeed from any kind of programme (he was highly amused when a well-meaning lady interpreted his idiosyncratic designation for the first movement, 'orgoglioso' - 'proudly' - as meaning 'organ-like'). Thoroughly classical in its proportions and discipline, the work owes much to the benchmark of Schumann, widely adopted by symphonists all over Europe at the time. At the same time it displays affinities with the fieriness of Berlioz - the very opening bars are a close cousin to the 'Orgy of the Brigands' from the Frenchman's 'Harold in Italy' Symphony, also with the lyrical tone of Grieg, and with the rhythmic vitality of Grieg's fellow-Norwegian Johan Svendsen, who conducted the première on 14th March 1894.

"In his review of that performance, Charles Kjerulf, the most influential Danish critic of the time, summed up the symphony's character as 'a child playing with dynamite'. The dynamite is perhaps most clearly to be found in the compact, propulsive rhythmical units of the first movement, which carry something close to a Beethovian generative force. In fact Nielsen had recently been so impressed with Beethoven's Fifth that he had set himself the task of writing out its first movement from memory, in full score. The childlike quality surfaces especially at movements when the pace slackens and pastoral relaxation takes over, as it does most obviously in the second movement - a deeply felt 'Andante', but one that conveys a sense of wonder at the beauty of the world, rather than projecting individualistic soul-states.

"Next comes a scherzo-substitute, somewhat Brahmsian in its initially easy-going character, though as it proceeds the tone darkens. In fact, this third movement functions as a kind of crucible, in which the symphony's musical constituents are as it were melted down and reshaped, with implications not only for the dramatic contrasts in the middle of the movement but also for the ultimate destination of the finale.

"Nominally in G minor, the symphony might have concluded quite conventionally in G major, or even placed the entire last movement entirely in that key. In fact Nielsen's finale works round to a coda in C major, making this possibly the first ever symphony to end in a key other than its home tonic. This phenomenon generally known as 'progressive tonality', is not something Nielsen worked out with scientific precision - though with hindsight the destination tonality reflects harmonic relationships subtly implanted earlier in the work, all the way back to its opening chord. Rather, it is the technical manifestation of a sense of adventure and a refusal to be tied down that are there for all to hear and that would lead Nielsen into all sort of mould-breaking advnetures in his later symphonies.

"In 1906, at the halfway point between his Second and Third Symphonies, Nielsen scored a national triumph with his comic opera 'Maskarade' - an immensely tuneful and heart-warming score that soon came to be recognized as the Danish national opera 'par excellence'. Then in December the following year his song 'Jens vejmand' ('Jens the Road-mender') suddenly became a smash hit after its first public performance. Nielsen had already resigned his post as second violinist in the Royal Opera Orchestra, and early in 1908 he was appointed assistant conductor, a post he would hold until June 1914.

"He was clearly coming into his prime as composer, performer and national icon, and his growing recognition brought with it increasingly regular commissions for incidental music and cantatas. There was even a measure of international success. In the autumn of 1906 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra udner Frederick Stock successfully performed his First Symphony. Interest in neighbouring Sweden and Norway was on the ride, and Nielsen gained an influential Czech supporter in the shape of the author Max Brod, who sang his praises in the German musical press and who perceptively noted an affinity - entirely coincidental - with his compatriot and friend Leoš Janáček.

"Curiously, Nielsen had very little contact with his symphonic opposite number and exact contemporary in Finland, Jean Sibelius. Nevertheless, not least among many significant musical impressions in these years was Sibelius's Second Symphony, whose influence may well be reflected in the long pedal-points and intense high string writing in the second movement of the 'Sinfonia espansiva'. Such ideas are one obvious aspect of 'expansiveness'. But Nielsen's idea with his unusual title is embodied above all in the character of the first movement.

"In later life Nielsen wrote three programme notes for the piece. The nearest he came to explaining his concept of the 'expansive' was in March 1931, seven months before his death: 'The first movement was meant as a burst of energy and life-affirmation thrown out into the wide world, which we humans not only desire to know in all its multifarious effects, but which we want to conquer and make our own.' To express that urge, Nielsen hit on a vigorous, muscular triple-time pulse that ultimately goes back to the first movement of Beethoven's 'Eroica', from where it passed down to him through Schumann's 'Rhenish' Symphony and Brahms's Third. Nielsen himself had adumbrated it in his 'Symphonic Rhapsody'. This kind of writing, with its highly arched thematic contours, its thrusting rhythms and propulsive harmony, gives the sensation of being composed as if in the future tense - always urgently looking forward. A significant operatic counterpart is the opening scene of Nielsen's biblical opera 'Saul and David', where exactly this musical character depicts the Israelites anxiously awaiting the delayed arrival of the prophet Samuel.

"In complete contrast to the phenomenal energy of the 'Allegro espansivo', the pastoral slow movement evokes the rolling countryside of Nielsen's native island of Funen. Here, in the concluding stages, vocalises for solo soprano and baritone are added to heighten the sense of lyrical ecstasy, expressed in a fragment of text found in Nielsen's draft score: 'All thoughts have vanished: I am lying beneath the heavens.' As he put it in one of his programme notes, the presence of the voices is 'only to highlight the peaceful atmosphere you might imagine in Paradise before the Fall'.

"In the third movement the opposed forces so far encountered are held in an uneasy balance, the moods being poised 'between dream and wakefulness', as a pupil of Nielsen put it in an analysis that came out - with the composer's approval - soon after the first published score. As so often with Nielsen, this stage of the symphony is something of a melting-pot, in which difficult issues are worked out - here notably in some convulsive fugal writing - that will enable the finale to consolidate, rather than having to fight all its battles from scratch.

"Originally headed 'pomposo' - which in Nielsen's understanding stood for grandeur but not self-aggrandisement - this finale is in fact a remarkable non-conflictual affair, at least by comparison with its counterparts in the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. The music strides out, in the composer's words, as 'a hymn to work and the healthy enjoyment of daily life', in which the 'the orchestra sings its introductory theme in so commonplace a fashion that you might well call it 'healthy-popular''. The conclusion comes 'like a man who, uninterestingly [in the sense of undermonstratively], but healthily and at his ease, reaches the goal of his travels'.

"The première of the 'Sinfonia espansiva' took place in Copenhagen on 28th February 1912, in a concert that also included Nielsen's new Violin Concerto. The event was a triumph, not only delighting his uspporters but also winning over those Danish critics who had previously been sceptical of his abilities, and the symphony went on to enjoy many performances in different countries, often under the composer's own baton. Two months after the première, Nielsen conducted it in Amsterdam. During the most restful parts of the finale, he asked the famous Concertgebouw Orchestra to play as 'boringly' as possible, and he stretched lazily to make his point. The musicians immediately imitated his gesture, and everyone burst out laughing. 'Bravo, gentlemen,' said Nielsen. 'I see we understand eachother.' And the laughter resumed. (David Fanning, 2014. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 1 In G Minor, Op. 7, FS 16: I. Allegro Orgoglioso

2. Symphony No. 1 In G minor, Op. 7, FS 16: II. Andante

3. Symphony No. 1 In G minor, Op. 7, FS 16: III. Allegro Comodo - Andante Sostenuto - Tempo I

4. Symphony No. 1 In G minor, Op. 7, FS 16: IV. Finale: Allegro Con Fuoco

5. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': I. Allegro Espansivo

6. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': II. Andante Pastorale

7. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': III. Allegretto Un Poco

8. Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, FS 60 'Sinfonia Espansiva': IV. Finale: Allegro

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El Órgano Histórico Español Vol. 4: La Escuela de Zaragoza I

"'The historical Spanish organ': under this apparently simple title, how many events, how many realization and what music! To dedicate a series of ten compact discs to this is an exciting venture, but it is also a challenge...

"An undertaking like this has been made possible thanks to the inexhaustible energy of its instigators, the harmonious collaboration of the organists, the availability of the organ builders, the competence of the sound technicians and the interests of the persons responsible for the churches.

"As far as the music is concerned, it was above all a matter of taking a census of the most outstanding historical instruments still in use. This task was especially entrusted to José Luis González Uriol, from Zaragoza. As much as possible we have tried to represent every part of Spain, although the most interesting organs are evidently not distributed in a regular manner throughout the country. Next we had the pleasant task of choosing the performers, who were charged with getting the most out of the instruments. It was logical to turn to three of the Spanish organists who have contributed most to the realization of the instrument's artistic heritage: Montserrat Torrent, José Luis González Uriol and Josep Mas i Bonet.

"As one of the objectives of the 'Fifth Centenary' is precisely to tighten the cultural ties between Spain and America, we felt it was desirable to associate two or three organists from across the Atlantic with the project. Two young performers make the art of organ playing shine in the countries of Latin America: Elisa Freixo from Brazil and Cristina García Benegas from Uruguay. And in North America we selected Kimberly Marshall, a specialist in Gothic and Renaissance organ. In Europe, among the organists who have contributed to make the Spanish organ known and appreciated, the names Francis Chapelet and Guy Bovet stand out. Finally, bearing in my the relation between Spain and Flanders during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, it seemed appropriate to us to include a Belgian organist, Bernard Foccroule, in this project.

"The selection has also been conditioned by the respective personalities of the ten performers, each of which had to be ascribed one or two instruments and a coherent part of the repertory. This proved to be the main difficulty of this programme. Ideally, we would entrust the recording of Cabezón's works, to a specialist of Cabezón playing Cabezón's organ, with the registers of the period, and the repeat the same operation in the ten discs. But history does not allow itself to be recreated so easily. Often the instruments which had been played by the great organists had disappeared, and those remaining were preserved because of their location in a small village, and had often suffered modifications. Thus is was practically impossible to interpret a composer's work in conditions of absolute historical fidelity... but does it matter?

"For these reasons we had to opt for a more subtle solution to the complex equation 'instruments-repertory-performers', and a certain flexibility has undoubtedly enabled us to present a more vivid panorama of this rich heritage. It must be said, however, that the spirit and oclour of the historical Spanish organ in its entirety has been preserved, and that the recent restorations are evidence of a respect which unfortunately has not always been demonstrated in other European countries. Each of the ten discs in the collection has been dedicated to a different composer (Cabezón, Correa de Arauxo, Cabanilles), to a regional school, or even to the splendour of an instrument particularly rich in possibilities.

"Because of its participation in the highest life of the spirit and its deep roots in daily life, is not the organ the privileged witness of the culture of an entire people? We hope that this recording may contribute to making known and loved this irreplaceable expression of the Spanish soul.

"This compact disc is dedicated to two great figures of the school of Zaragoza: Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia (1561-1627) and Pablo Bruna (1611-1679). It starts with the patronage of Antonio de Cabezón, the spiritual father of Spanish organ music, and it ends with a 'Batalha' by a Portuguese composer, Pedro de Araujo (?-1684), who in his way prolonged a tradition which lasted for more than a century.

"Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia, organist of Huesca cathedral from 1585, then organist of the Seo of Zaragoza from 1603, was a contemporary of Correa de Arauxo, of the English Virginal players, and of the Dutchman J.P. Sweelinck. This was an era of remarkable development in the writing of works for keyboard instruments; an intermediate period between the first transcriptions of vocal music, glossed to a greater or lesser extent, and the establishment of a more instrumental style. Aguilera had a strong personality, and his work possesses a surprising mixture of vitality and mystic depth.

"In the same region, fifty years later, Pablo Bruna, called 'the blind man of Daroca' carried this evolution further in work in a more popular vein, and of a more direct charm.

"It seemed logical to us to have Pablo Bruna's works played on a later organ in the town where he was the organist of the 'Iglesia Colegiata'. The organ in the church of Santo Domingo does in fact possess all the colours his music calls for. For Aguilera de Heredia's works, the polyphonic organ of Sádaba with its transparent luminous sound was chosen.

"Here is a brief commentary on each of the works in this programme:

"1. Cabezón, 'Diferencias sobre el canto del Caballero': Five couplet present the song twice to the soprano, then to the tenor, the alto and the bass successively. Cabezón's modal harmony and delicate counterpoint express all the nostalgia of this popular melody. The song relates the sad end of the 'Caballero', the flower of Olmedo, assassinated at night by some bandits.

"2. Cabezón, 'Gallarda Milanesa': Galliard in two parts followed by an ornamental variation. The score evokes the ambivalence between the organ, the harp and the lute, instruments which Cabezón played when he was a court musician. There is a suppleness in the ornamentation which perhaps even surpasses the relative rigidity of the pipe instrument.

"3. Pablo Bruna, 'Tiento de mano derecha y en medio a dos tiples': A particularity of the Spanish organ is its 'jeux coupés' between the C and the C# in the middle of the keyboard. This brilliant invention makes it possible to colour the top part of the bass in different ways which allows the flowering of 'Tientos de medio registro', characteristic of the Spanish tradition, and of which it seems that Francisco Peraza was the inventor. It is this register (often made with the muffled 'Corneta') which allows these impressive ornamental solos, abundant among the Iberian composers, to be played on an organ with a single keyboard, like the two instruments in this recording. Bruna's solo is unusual because it begins with a solo voice, and then goes on to two solo voices from the middle of the piece.

"4. Pablo Bruna, 'Tiento sobre la letanía de la Virgen': This is another work which allowed exploits on the register of an organ with a single keyboard, but with cut registers. It is an impressive ensemble of variations on a hymn to the Virgin. The final progression, in which the composer allows himself to be carried away by a kind of mystical delirium, evokes other famous litanies, like those Jehan Alain.

"Being blind, Bruna was probably not able to control the writing of his compositions, and this work has come to us in quite a confusing version, especially for the one who wants to follow the successive regular harmonies of the main theme. There are obvious errors, and, in the manner of Guy Bovet, who has very kindly given them his attention, I took the libert of reordering certain passages.

"5. Pablo Bruna, 'Tiento de falsas': The 'Tiento de falsas' (that is: of discords), equivalent to the Italian Toccata of the 'durezze' is also a typical genre of Spanish literature. It is the ideal occasion to listen to a solo of 'Flautado'. Its discords being enhanced by the mesotonic temperament of the instrument. It will be heard as a painful meditation, like the distortions found in El Greco's paintings.

"6. Pablo Bruna, 'Tiento de medio registro de bajo': Here, it is the bass register of the keyboard which is entrusted with the solo. In this case, owing to the lack of a trumpet of eight feet, I have used a 'Bajoncillo' of four feet, and eight feet in depth. The register is quite free, foreshadowing certain characteristics of the eighteenth century French composers, enhancing the clairon solos with the bourdon stops of 16'.

"7. Pablo Bruna, 'Gaytilla con dos tiples': In this piece, which is like a popular dance, it is a duo of the 'Clarín' that holds the melody. Like in many Spanish pieces, the rhythm is particularly lively, readily combining the groups of quavers in 3+3+2, or in other arrangements which are doubtlessly evidence of flamenco influence.

"8. Aguilera de Heredia, 'Ensalada': The first work of Aguilera de Heredia is a surprising 'pot-pourri', a real Russian salad, where the most varied ideas are side by side, and where the most unexpected rhythms clash. This is one of the aspects of the personality of this composer, in other respects capable of the most demanding concentration in his more liturgical works. When necessary, I have opted for the course of assimilating the secondary voices (written in regular time-values, doubtless for convenience) to an irregular rhythm (3+3+2) or the main melodic elements, which seems to me the only natural way of playing such a bouncy piece. Perhaps it would have been better to have an instrument with two keyboard, but the surprising resources of the single keyboard allow a variety of colours which are very convincing.

"9. Aguilera de Heredia, 'Salve de primer tono': A new, more serious and more interior tone stamps the works that follow, which may or may not have been inspired by plainsong. Now it is the decorative counterpoint that takes the lead. And it does so in a serious style that does not entirely abandon the rhythmical surprises, but integrates them in a more measured way.

"10. Aguilera de Heredia, 'Segunda obra de primer tono': One feels that in this work there is relation with the fantasias by English and Dutch composers. The breathing of the work is organised on the almost continuous presence of a very simple melodic theme, around which we find the adornments of a marvellously expressive counterpoint. Here, as in Bruna's works, the rhythmic cadence goes from binary to ternary at two third of the composition.

"11. Lionel Rogg, 'Improvisation': Since Aguilera de Heredia unfortunately did not write any solo for soprano, I have chosen to sound the 'Corneta' in a 'Tiento de mano derecha' on the song of Kyrie, a Gregorian theme whose contours could have inspired someone like Correa de Arauxo. After an improvisation at the beginning, the work has been somewhat polished in order not to make a blot on it in the middle of its illustrious neighbours.

"12. Aguilera de Heredia, 'Tiento grande de quarto tono': The 'Tiento' by Aguilera is the wisest one, and the most developed. Its theme proposes a diminished fourth with a very impressive effect on the unequal temperament. Here also we can hear the passage of a binary cadence to a ternary, and a spectacular peroration.

"13. Aguilera de Heredia, 'Discurso sobre Los Saeculorum': In this last piece, Aguilar mingles several Gregorian themes which are combined in a counterpoint of a sustained vocal character, which reminds us of certain motets of the school of Josquin des Prés.

"14. Pedro de Araujo, 'Batalha': The first compact disc of the collection, made by Kimberly Marshall, contains the work by Clément Jannequin which doubtlessly inspired the genre of 'batailles' for organ. In the version of Pedro de Arauja's, a Portuguese musician, one will again find the beginning of 'la Guerre' (sic), and later on, certain anecdotal elements. The question is to tell a story, and of course to allow all the sound resources of the instrument, including the Trompetería, to be heard." (Lionel Rogg, tr. Angela Buxton. From the liner notes.)

Performer: Lionel Rogg

1. Antonio de Cabezón - Diferencias Sobre El Canto Llano Del Caballero

2. Antonio de Cabezón - Diferencias Sobre La Gallarda Milanesa

3. Pablo Bruna - Tiento De Primer Tono De Mano Derecha Y En Medio A Dos Tiples

4. Pablo Bruna - Tiento De Segundo Tono Sobre La Letanía De La Virgen

5. Pablo Bruna - Tiento De Falsas De Segundo Tono

6. Pablo Bruna - Tiento De Medio Registro De Bajo

7. Pablo Bruna - Gaytilla De Sexto Tono Con Dos Triples

8. Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia - Obra De Octavo Tono Alto: Ensalada

9. Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia - Salve De Primer Tono (Por Delasolre)

10. Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia - Segunda Obra De Primer Tono

11. Lionel Rogg - Tiento De Mano Derecha Sobre El Canto Llano Del Kyrie (Improvisation)

12. Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia - Tiento Grande De Cuarto Tono

13. Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia - Discurso Sobre Los Saeculorum

14. Pedro de Araujo - Batalha De 6. Tom

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