Duruflé organ music

[Inigo]

Thanks for your kind offers... If I ever visit UK by car, I ssuspect I'll end buying gramophones too!

There's a simple software I like very much for listening to radio stations online, which is Radio Sure. It's free, and had a most convenient small console. Lots of radio stations of every corner of the world, clarified by name, country, thematic, etc. Once I wrote 'organ' in the database search feature, and an interesting radio appeared, OrganLive, which is organ full time! They also have a website, where you see what has been played before, etc.
In another vein, radiosure led me to the ATOS, American Theater Organ Society, with radio online too, and an interstitial website.
(BTW, I also love Sidney Torch playing organ. Several of his Deccas were also issued in Spain in the early forties. That was the first pop pipe organ i ever knew, and it's another love of mine) .

[Inigo]

Thanks! The article on Reger and his music is very interesting. I have to listen to some of the pieces Bennecker praised most. I do not know (consciously) any of this music. Herein there's a task for next weekends, in the quieteness of the country home of my wife: to look for Reger's music and careful listening! Thanks again!

[Inigo]

The pelude played by that girl Lisa Hummel is great! The Hauptwerk sounds marvelous! There's a guy in UK that has installed a Hauptwerk with four manuals in hid home and gives interesting chats and concerts with it. He also divulges other organs and shows them. I don't find the links right now, will come back.

[drh]

Somehow, I suspect these may be pretty thin on the ground in Spain or the UK--they're not exactly commonplace here in the United States--but if you want to hear some really excellent organ recording on 78s, keep an eye open for the ones Robert Noehren released on the Audiophile label in the late 1940s or so. They are clear red vinyl pressings, like the RCA Victor Heritage issues, but unlike the Heritage issues they were not long-deleted antiques repressed in modern material; they were first run recordings cut by a guy who had an interest in high fidelity and lots of bucks (thanks to a prosperous family shoe mfg. business) to back it up. The one I have is Audiophile AP-3, Liszt Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H and Vierne Carillon de Westminster and Legende. Audiophile did make the transition to LP, although the owner went to some pains to warn the buying public that his 78s sounded better--that gives you an idea about the outfit. I have one of those, too, AP-2 (the same piece by Liszt, the same pieces by Vierne plus a couple more, and some chorale preludes by Reger).

Incidentally, Audiophile was primarily a jazz label, as the proprietor was first and foremost a jazz lover. Why he took a detour to record rather abstruse organ music on a few issues I can't say; as far as I know, those were the label's only ventures out of traditional jazz.

If you'd like to read more about the label and hear a sample (sorry, its a jazz number, not organ), here's an article I wrote a couple of years ago: https://www.tnt-audio.com/vintage/vinyl78_1_e.html

[Inigo]

Thanks for the interesting articles...
About the guy who shows organs and has a Hauptwerk one, the channel is this: https://www.youtube.com/c/FraserGartshore

[Inigo]

And now, after repeated listening to several organ pieces, from one to another, etc... I have a terrible doubt. I remember one melody and I can't remember its origin. If any of you have a keyboard at hand and good memory... It has a daunting melody that developes into a fuga, and goes and goes until the pedal. In C minor (three flats) it is this one (notes by name, all quavers in minuscules, crotchets in capital, timing 60 crotchets/min):
g3 c4 g3 g3 e4 g3 g3 a3 g3 f3 c4 D4 g3 f3 e3 b3 C4...
Do you recognize that melody?

[Orchorsol]

Sounds like the Prelude & Fugue sur le Nom d'Alain - that theme is Duruflé's musical encoding of the letters of the name of his friend and colleague Jehan Alain, who fell in the second world war. It forms the fast ostinato in the Prelude where it's not so recognisable, but what I believe you're thinking of is the main subject of the fugue. In this video, another fabulous performance, the fugue starts at about 7'20" (following the interlude, which quotes the theme of Alain's most famous piece, Litanies) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sevZ7U0Rus

[Inigo]

Yes, thanks! I looked for it but didn't find it... I believed it was from Franck, as it looks like his style.
Curious that this theme is used in the fuga in slow pace, but it's true that seems to form the repetitive cell of the pelude in fast pace. The theme of Jean Alain Letanie appears as soon as 1'20", with several repeats along the piece, in different moods and tones, slightly modified to the harmonic background. I can't find it, though, in the fugue, but maybe it is also there transformed. I've also tried to see if durufle's theme is the letanies theme reversed in some way, or mirrored or something... Just to investigate! Thanks!

[Marco Gilardetti]

Another organ lover here, although not even remotely on the same level of maestro Orchorsol.

Unfortunately I only have one single "diamond record" disc of an organ solo, played by Rollo Maitland, which plays back so feeble and distant that possibly kept me off from searching for other organ records... ...and also built up some prejudice concerning the self-proclaimed "top quality" of diamond records...

[Inigo]

I also have a couple or three acoustic records on the organ. One of them is a Spanish 1919 recording of choir singing gregorian chants with organ accompaniment. The organ sounds like a feeble harmonium! The record is ugly and poor, but I keep it for its historical interest, being by a famous Spanish capella choir and directed by a famous choirmaster, and for being an early Spanish attempt to record this music. A venerable record