Sunday 12 March 2023 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Adam Brakel
St. James Cathedral, Orlando, FL (USA)
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Adam Brakel
St. James Cathedral, Orlando, FL (USA)
Hailed as “an absolute organ prodigy” by National Public Radio and “one of the most talented organists in the world” by the Chicago Tribune, concert organist Adam J. Brakel is a preeminent artist “with the technique and virtuosity that most concert pianists could only dream of.” (NPR)
Adam’s celebrated performances span the globe—from coast to coast in the United States to across Europe and Asia. Brakel has one of the largest and most diverse performing repertoires in the world. His expansive list includes the entire spectrum of styles featuring the complete organ works of Bach, Bruhns, Buxtehude, Couperin, Liszt, de Grigny, Franck, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Duruflé.
Brakel’s performance highlights include the complete works of César Franck, and, most notably, the fiendishly difficult Six Etudes of Jeanne Demessieux, of which Adam is one of the few organists in the world to have performed and recorded in its entirety. A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and Duquesne University, Adam has a rich and decorated musical pedigree, having studied with Donald Sutherland and Dame Gillian Weir. He has taken top prizes in the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition, the Gruenstein Memorial Organ Competition, the John Rodland Memorial Scholarship Competition, the French Organ Music Seminar Competition, and the Carlene Neihart International Organ Competition. He has also earned the André Marchal Award for Excellence in Performance as well as the Oundle Award, among other honors.
In addition to his concert career, Adam serves as Director of Music for St. James Cathedral and the Diocese of Orlando, Florida.
Adam’s celebrated performances span the globe—from coast to coast in the United States to across Europe and Asia. Brakel has one of the largest and most diverse performing repertoires in the world. His expansive list includes the entire spectrum of styles featuring the complete organ works of Bach, Bruhns, Buxtehude, Couperin, Liszt, de Grigny, Franck, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Duruflé.
Brakel’s performance highlights include the complete works of César Franck, and, most notably, the fiendishly difficult Six Etudes of Jeanne Demessieux, of which Adam is one of the few organists in the world to have performed and recorded in its entirety. A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and Duquesne University, Adam has a rich and decorated musical pedigree, having studied with Donald Sutherland and Dame Gillian Weir. He has taken top prizes in the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition, the Gruenstein Memorial Organ Competition, the John Rodland Memorial Scholarship Competition, the French Organ Music Seminar Competition, and the Carlene Neihart International Organ Competition. He has also earned the André Marchal Award for Excellence in Performance as well as the Oundle Award, among other honors.
In addition to his concert career, Adam serves as Director of Music for St. James Cathedral and the Diocese of Orlando, Florida.
Program
Marco Enrico Bossi (1861-1925)
Étude Symphonique, op. 78
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)
Scherzo, op. 2
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582
François Roberday (1624-1680)
12 Fugues et 6 caprices sur le mesme sujet
Fugue 12 in D Major
César Franck (1822-1890)
Pièce Héroïque
Max Reger (1873-1916)
Fantasie and Fugue über BACH
George Shearing (1919-2011)
There is a Happy Land
I Love Thee My Lord
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)
Mein Junges Leben hat ein End, SwWV 324
Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937)
Symphony VI, op. 42
V. Finale
Marco Enrico Bossi (1861-1925)
Étude Symphonique, op. 78
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)
Scherzo, op. 2
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582
François Roberday (1624-1680)
12 Fugues et 6 caprices sur le mesme sujet
Fugue 12 in D Major
César Franck (1822-1890)
Pièce Héroïque
Max Reger (1873-1916)
Fantasie and Fugue über BACH
George Shearing (1919-2011)
There is a Happy Land
I Love Thee My Lord
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)
Mein Junges Leben hat ein End, SwWV 324
Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937)
Symphony VI, op. 42
V. Finale
Program Notes
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
The son of an organist, Bossi began music study with his father. After completing piano studies at the Milan Conservatory in 1879, Bossi concertized in London and Paris and discovered the organ world. (Bach was unknown in Italy at the time.) Consequently, he left the Milan Conservatory and at age 20 became the organist of Como Cathedral. He later turned to composing and took successive teaching posts in Naples, Bologna, Venice, and Rome. Despite being a prolific composer, he was best known as a leading concert organist. However, after completing a 1924 concert tour in America, he unexpectedly died in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on his return home to Italy. Published in New York in 1897, Étude Symphonique, op. 78 in G minor is one of Bossi’s most difficult and popular concert showpieces. It is filled with blistering energy as the organist’s feet play over 800 notes in a stunning display of virtuoso pedal work.
Duruflé was appointed organist of Saint Etienne-du-Mont in 1929, a post he held for the rest of his life. He was highly self-critical and left only 14 opus numbers. His four major organ works were written between 1926 and 1943. Reminiscent of Debussy’s works, Scherzo was completed in 1926 and was Duruflé's first published organ composition. It is light and joyful and belongs to a genre of thin-textured, scherzo-like pieces favored by many 20th-century French organists. Cast in rondo form (ABACA), the three statements of the lively main theme are set against contrasting couplets. The piece closes with a calm coda. Duruflé later made an orchestral arrangement of the work, which was published in 1947 as his opus 8.
Like Bossi, Johann Sebastian Bach was most admired in his own day as an organist rather than as a composer. In 1708, at age 23, he commenced a decade working for the Duke of Weimar and produced a great outpouring of organ works, including the seminal Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582, which scholars believe was composed by 1714. As he had done with many other forms, Bach created the gold standard for the passacaglia, surpassing the early models of Buxtehude and Pachelbel. The piece begins with an eight-bar bass theme which may or may not have been borrowed from Raison’s 1688 Livre d’Orgue. The 20 variations that follow reflect a complexity of musical progression building to a five-part texture that ushers in the concluding fugue. The subject is taken from the passacaglia accompanied by counterpoint such that the voices can eventually be exchanged. The piece concludes with a brief Adagio.
Roberday was a gifted but unknown 17th-century French composer. His father owned an organ and was also a goldsmith. Following his father’s death in 1651, Roberday took over the family business and was appointed the royal goldsmith of Paris. He was also organist for a short time to Anne of Austria, Louis XIV's mother. In 1660 he published, at his own expense, his only surviving compositions, a book of Fugues and Caprices. A few years later, Roberday went bankrupt and moved to the countryside, where he died of the plague. His fugues and caprices are non-liturgical polyphonic pieces more akin to German music than to that produced by his French colleagues. Described as “quirky with energy and sophisticated exuberance,” his music manifests a constant transparency and grace. The fugues use long-note subjects and the first nine are paired with a caprice based on the same (in reality, similar) subject. Fugue No. 12 in D Major (with no corresponding caprice) is a variation fugue. To begin, the subject is in alla breve long notes, then treated in common time quarter notes, and following a short interlude with the subject inverted, finally appears in eighth notes with a short Adagio coda in triple time.
A native of Liège, Belgium, Franck settled in Paris and became organist of the celebrated basilica of Sainte-Clotilde. In order to suitably host the World Exhibition of 1878, France built the grand Palais du Trocadéro (along with the adjacent Eiffel Tower). Its central building was a 5,000-seat auditorium that housed a new Cavaillé-Coll organ. Franck was chosen to play one of the fifteen inaugural organ recitals, and for the occasion he composed and premiered his Trois Pièces. The last of the set, Piece heroïque, is one of his most popular organ works. No evidence suggests the work has any programmatic intent; nevertheless, it is filled with dramatic contrasts as it opens with a dark-hued, main theme heard beneath a restless chordal accompaniment, followed by a lyrical middle section with its delicate chorale theme, and the culminating return of the main theme leading to a triumphant coda with the chorale played in B major on full organ.
One of the last German Romantic composers, Max Reger composed his 20-minute Fantasy and Fugue on BACH, op. 46 in 1900 when, due to a mental breakdown, he had returned to live with his parents in Weiden. It is considered by many to be his most technically difficult work, and Josef Rheinberger, to whom the work is dedicated, allegedly said, “Herr Reger, I don’t believe that human fingers can play nor human ears bear your new work!” It was premiered by Reger’s friend Karl Straube in the summer of 1900 at St. Willibrord Cathedral in Wesel. Reger shows his veneration for J. S. Bach by kaleidoscopically saturating the piece with permutations of the four-note BACH motive (B-flat, A, C, B-natural) ranging from half to 32nd notes. Indeed, there is but one measure in which the motive does not appear! The fantasy is framed by a prologue at the beginning and a grandiose epilogue at the end. The fugue is directly modeled on Bach’s Fugue in E-flat Major (“St. Anne”); their second subjects are nearly identical. Unlike Bach, however, Reger wrote his fugue in a symphonically progressive context as it increases in tempo and dynamics to the end when it closes with a brief return to the fantasy’s prologue bringing the piece full circle.
Congenitally blind, George Shearing was a self-taught pianist born into a poor family in London, England. There he rose to fame as a jazz musician, particularly through his BBC radio appearances. In 1947 he immigrated to America and became a renowned recording artist and educator, appearing frequently on television and playing with major orchestras. He played with the Utah Symphony under Maurice Abravanel and also taught many summers at the University of Utah Jazz Workshop. During an eleven-week tour in 1976, whenever he had down time (and a piano), Shearing recorded variations of favorite hymns. Marcia and Michael McCabe made transcriptions of these tape recordings which were published in 1977. That same year Dale Wood, in collaboration with Shearing, arranged the piano pieces for organ. There Is a Happy Land uses a Hindu melody and first appeared as a hymn in 1838. I Love Thee, My Lord was printed with an anonymous tune in Jeremiah Ingalls’ Christian Harmony in 1805.
A highly influential Dutch composer and teacher, Sweelinck was organist of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam and was pivotal in bridging the music of the Renaissance and the Baroque. Not unlike Shearing 400 years later, Sweelinck was also adept at composing keyboard variations on hymn tunes—a practice stemming from customs of the Calvinist church which prohibited organ use during the service. (Instead it employed organists to perform variations on church hymns before and after the worship service to help congregations learn the tunes.) Sweelinck’s masterful set of six variations on Mein junges Leben hat ein End [My young life has ended] became his most successful composition. The plaintive AABB tune originated in Germany and was likely shared with Sweelinck by a German student. Sweelinck never simply repeats the A and B sections; rather, he surprises the listener with fresh material in each phrase. The first two variations are in four-voice accompanied song form—the first with simple imitation, the second with stretto. Variations 3 to 5 are freely composed with restrained but luminous virtuosity. Variation 6 returns as an accompanied song, but with the accompaniment functioning more in a texture of commentary than of imitation.
Widor’s ten organ symphonies are recognized as his masterpieces. Although written for solo organ, he called them “symphonies” because they were written for “symphonic” organs designed by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll with orchestral groups of stops and dynamics unavailable on previous organs. Although for 64 years, Widor played the largest Cavaillé-Coll organ in France at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, the Sixth Symphony in G minor, like Franck’s Pièce heroïque heard earlier, was conceived for and premiered at the inauguration of the new organ built in the enormous festival hall of the Trocadéro. The fifth movement, Finale, is marked Vivace and is in rondo form. Of somewhat unorthodox construction, it is built around just two themes. The rhythmically distinctive first theme is a kind of heroic march in C major that quickly modulates through multiple other (non-tonic) keys. The second theme takes on a more static character. Widor cleverly delays reaching the tonic until the two themes combine and the movement ends jubilantly in G major.
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
The son of an organist, Bossi began music study with his father. After completing piano studies at the Milan Conservatory in 1879, Bossi concertized in London and Paris and discovered the organ world. (Bach was unknown in Italy at the time.) Consequently, he left the Milan Conservatory and at age 20 became the organist of Como Cathedral. He later turned to composing and took successive teaching posts in Naples, Bologna, Venice, and Rome. Despite being a prolific composer, he was best known as a leading concert organist. However, after completing a 1924 concert tour in America, he unexpectedly died in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on his return home to Italy. Published in New York in 1897, Étude Symphonique, op. 78 in G minor is one of Bossi’s most difficult and popular concert showpieces. It is filled with blistering energy as the organist’s feet play over 800 notes in a stunning display of virtuoso pedal work.
Duruflé was appointed organist of Saint Etienne-du-Mont in 1929, a post he held for the rest of his life. He was highly self-critical and left only 14 opus numbers. His four major organ works were written between 1926 and 1943. Reminiscent of Debussy’s works, Scherzo was completed in 1926 and was Duruflé's first published organ composition. It is light and joyful and belongs to a genre of thin-textured, scherzo-like pieces favored by many 20th-century French organists. Cast in rondo form (ABACA), the three statements of the lively main theme are set against contrasting couplets. The piece closes with a calm coda. Duruflé later made an orchestral arrangement of the work, which was published in 1947 as his opus 8.
Like Bossi, Johann Sebastian Bach was most admired in his own day as an organist rather than as a composer. In 1708, at age 23, he commenced a decade working for the Duke of Weimar and produced a great outpouring of organ works, including the seminal Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582, which scholars believe was composed by 1714. As he had done with many other forms, Bach created the gold standard for the passacaglia, surpassing the early models of Buxtehude and Pachelbel. The piece begins with an eight-bar bass theme which may or may not have been borrowed from Raison’s 1688 Livre d’Orgue. The 20 variations that follow reflect a complexity of musical progression building to a five-part texture that ushers in the concluding fugue. The subject is taken from the passacaglia accompanied by counterpoint such that the voices can eventually be exchanged. The piece concludes with a brief Adagio.
Roberday was a gifted but unknown 17th-century French composer. His father owned an organ and was also a goldsmith. Following his father’s death in 1651, Roberday took over the family business and was appointed the royal goldsmith of Paris. He was also organist for a short time to Anne of Austria, Louis XIV's mother. In 1660 he published, at his own expense, his only surviving compositions, a book of Fugues and Caprices. A few years later, Roberday went bankrupt and moved to the countryside, where he died of the plague. His fugues and caprices are non-liturgical polyphonic pieces more akin to German music than to that produced by his French colleagues. Described as “quirky with energy and sophisticated exuberance,” his music manifests a constant transparency and grace. The fugues use long-note subjects and the first nine are paired with a caprice based on the same (in reality, similar) subject. Fugue No. 12 in D Major (with no corresponding caprice) is a variation fugue. To begin, the subject is in alla breve long notes, then treated in common time quarter notes, and following a short interlude with the subject inverted, finally appears in eighth notes with a short Adagio coda in triple time.
A native of Liège, Belgium, Franck settled in Paris and became organist of the celebrated basilica of Sainte-Clotilde. In order to suitably host the World Exhibition of 1878, France built the grand Palais du Trocadéro (along with the adjacent Eiffel Tower). Its central building was a 5,000-seat auditorium that housed a new Cavaillé-Coll organ. Franck was chosen to play one of the fifteen inaugural organ recitals, and for the occasion he composed and premiered his Trois Pièces. The last of the set, Piece heroïque, is one of his most popular organ works. No evidence suggests the work has any programmatic intent; nevertheless, it is filled with dramatic contrasts as it opens with a dark-hued, main theme heard beneath a restless chordal accompaniment, followed by a lyrical middle section with its delicate chorale theme, and the culminating return of the main theme leading to a triumphant coda with the chorale played in B major on full organ.
One of the last German Romantic composers, Max Reger composed his 20-minute Fantasy and Fugue on BACH, op. 46 in 1900 when, due to a mental breakdown, he had returned to live with his parents in Weiden. It is considered by many to be his most technically difficult work, and Josef Rheinberger, to whom the work is dedicated, allegedly said, “Herr Reger, I don’t believe that human fingers can play nor human ears bear your new work!” It was premiered by Reger’s friend Karl Straube in the summer of 1900 at St. Willibrord Cathedral in Wesel. Reger shows his veneration for J. S. Bach by kaleidoscopically saturating the piece with permutations of the four-note BACH motive (B-flat, A, C, B-natural) ranging from half to 32nd notes. Indeed, there is but one measure in which the motive does not appear! The fantasy is framed by a prologue at the beginning and a grandiose epilogue at the end. The fugue is directly modeled on Bach’s Fugue in E-flat Major (“St. Anne”); their second subjects are nearly identical. Unlike Bach, however, Reger wrote his fugue in a symphonically progressive context as it increases in tempo and dynamics to the end when it closes with a brief return to the fantasy’s prologue bringing the piece full circle.
Congenitally blind, George Shearing was a self-taught pianist born into a poor family in London, England. There he rose to fame as a jazz musician, particularly through his BBC radio appearances. In 1947 he immigrated to America and became a renowned recording artist and educator, appearing frequently on television and playing with major orchestras. He played with the Utah Symphony under Maurice Abravanel and also taught many summers at the University of Utah Jazz Workshop. During an eleven-week tour in 1976, whenever he had down time (and a piano), Shearing recorded variations of favorite hymns. Marcia and Michael McCabe made transcriptions of these tape recordings which were published in 1977. That same year Dale Wood, in collaboration with Shearing, arranged the piano pieces for organ. There Is a Happy Land uses a Hindu melody and first appeared as a hymn in 1838. I Love Thee, My Lord was printed with an anonymous tune in Jeremiah Ingalls’ Christian Harmony in 1805.
A highly influential Dutch composer and teacher, Sweelinck was organist of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam and was pivotal in bridging the music of the Renaissance and the Baroque. Not unlike Shearing 400 years later, Sweelinck was also adept at composing keyboard variations on hymn tunes—a practice stemming from customs of the Calvinist church which prohibited organ use during the service. (Instead it employed organists to perform variations on church hymns before and after the worship service to help congregations learn the tunes.) Sweelinck’s masterful set of six variations on Mein junges Leben hat ein End [My young life has ended] became his most successful composition. The plaintive AABB tune originated in Germany and was likely shared with Sweelinck by a German student. Sweelinck never simply repeats the A and B sections; rather, he surprises the listener with fresh material in each phrase. The first two variations are in four-voice accompanied song form—the first with simple imitation, the second with stretto. Variations 3 to 5 are freely composed with restrained but luminous virtuosity. Variation 6 returns as an accompanied song, but with the accompaniment functioning more in a texture of commentary than of imitation.
Widor’s ten organ symphonies are recognized as his masterpieces. Although written for solo organ, he called them “symphonies” because they were written for “symphonic” organs designed by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll with orchestral groups of stops and dynamics unavailable on previous organs. Although for 64 years, Widor played the largest Cavaillé-Coll organ in France at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, the Sixth Symphony in G minor, like Franck’s Pièce heroïque heard earlier, was conceived for and premiered at the inauguration of the new organ built in the enormous festival hall of the Trocadéro. The fifth movement, Finale, is marked Vivace and is in rondo form. Of somewhat unorthodox construction, it is built around just two themes. The rhythmically distinctive first theme is a kind of heroic march in C major that quickly modulates through multiple other (non-tonic) keys. The second theme takes on a more static character. Widor cleverly delays reaching the tonic until the two themes combine and the movement ends jubilantly in G major.
