20th Century Organ Music

Three original Argo albums demonstrating the vitality and variety of 20thcentury organ music, newly remastered and compiled together for the first time in a 2CD set, with new booklet notes on the music and a tribute to Simon Preston. Simon Preston had only left King’s College, Cambridge, (where he had been organ scholar) the previous summer, when he was invited in the spring of 1963 to Cirencester in Gloucestershire. The music at the town’s grammar school was now under the charge of Peter Maxwell Davies, who would make a name for himself as a firebrand in postwar English music during the 1960s, just as Preston would take charge of several of the country’s major choral institutions and raise them to new heights of professionalism and excellence. He recorded a large-scale fantasia based on the medieval plainchant O magnum mysterium, which was preceded by several, much simpler movements written by Maxwell Davies for his teenage charges. The piece and the project was a groundbreaking piece of music education, and the fantasia itself showed the composer at his most virtuosic in terms of commanding long-range structures. There have been very few recordings since, and this premiere has lost none of its impact.

Tracks

Details

Format: CD
Artist: Simon Preston
Release Date: 03 November 2017
Genre: Classical Music
Label: ELOQUENCE / DECCA
Distributor: Universal Music