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Reflections - Koivusalo

Reflections - Koivusalo

Fuga  FUGA-9363

Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid

Classical - Instrumental


Oskar Merikanto: Häähymni (Bröllopshymn/Wedding Hymn)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (BWV 720); Herzlich tut mich verlangen (BWV 727); Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ (BWV 676); Praeludium & fuga in G (BWV 541)
Dietrich Buxtehude: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (BuxWV 184)
Johannes Brahms: Herzlich tut mich verlangen (op.122 no.10)
Wilhelm Rudnick: Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ (Sonata no.1 in G major, Op. 44: 2nd movement)
Felix Mendelssohn: Sonata in C minor (Op. 65, No. 2)
Petri Koivusalo: Chorale Suite for Organ (2013)
Otto Nicolai – Franz Liszt: Kirchliche Fest-Ouverture über ”Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”

Petri Koivusalo, the new organ of Espoo Cathedral, Finland

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A true 5.0 multichannel recording, editing and mastering: Mika Koivusalo
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Review by John Miller - December 6, 2013

The second largest city in Finland, along the Baltic shore in the western outskirts of Helsinki's metropolitan area, Espoo gained its diocesan status in 2004. The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland had a church with a history from medieval times (1480s), and this "Old Church" became Espoo's Cathedral. The existing organ (the third instrument of the Old Church) was built in 1967 but even after expansion in 1989, another restoration was required, consequent to the upgrading of a relatively small church into a cathedral. The decision was made instead to build a completely new organ. The Veikko Virtanen company of Finland was again given the commission, and the new organ was finally inaugurated in the summer of 2012.

Petri Koivusalo is the Espoo Cathedral organist. In 2010 he recorded an excellent farewell programme on the old organ just before it was taken apart for transport to a new home (Espoon tuomiokirkon urut - Petri Koivusalo). Now he showcases the magnificent new organ with another imaginative and well-planned set of pieces, illustrating its ability to shine in styles from Baroque to Modern. He opens with a warm, welcoming Wedding Hymn by Oskar Mericanto, a distinguished organist himself. Its imposing opening has a tune based on richly billowing upbeats, leading to a Big Tune which, after a central calm folk-like interlude, reappears in majestic splendour. As Finnish wedding music goes, this is unusually celebratory, as the normal custom is for sober contemplation in such pieces.

Koivusalo's has a theme running through rest of the programme: that of chorales, important elements of Lutheran liturgy, which provided seeds for musical development through the ages.

He reflects on three very well-known chorale tunes, which inspired JS Bach to write elaborate preludes for the organ, based on these familiar melodies. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (BWV 720); Herzlich tut mich verlangen (BWV 727) and Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ (BWV 676) are played with panache, letting us hear some of the beautiful solo stops as well as some clearly-articulated fluid passage work. Bach's dazzling Praeludium & fuga in G (BWV 541) caps the three chorale preludes, the organ fully up to its brilliance with a full range of tonal colours and textures. There has been much scholarly debate about the attribution of BWV 541. The watermark of the autograph's paper dates to 1733. This watermark is otherwise found only in two letters by JS Bach, written for his 22 year old son WF Bach's application for the post of organist at the Sophienkirche in Dresden during the summer of 1733. This fact led musicologist Hans-Joachim Schulz to propose that Bach gave his son this impressive virtuoso composition to take to the trial in Dresden. Its effect was guaranteed, and the young Bach won the position as "best and most suitable" of the contestants.

Buxtehude is the next composer, with a chorale prelude based on Ein feste Burg as a badge of Lutheranism, followed by Brahms whose chorale prelude Herzlich tut mich verlangen comes from one of his last works, a set of eleven choral preludes (Op. 122, 1996). Here the tones are dark, sombrely set in the cello range, showing the beauty of the soft, deep registers of the organ. A meditative piece, and "like a blue-grey landscape" as Petri Koivusalo suggests in his commentary. Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ appears next, in the central movement of an organ sonata by German church musician Wilhelm Rudnick, whose work I had not previously encountered. It is an affecting piece, with the hymn tune in the middle voice, solo clarinet pipes floating it beautifully into the Espoo Cathedral space.

Mendelssohn's four movement Organ Sonata in C minor (Op. 6, no.2) gives us a thorough test of the new organ's abilities in Romantic music - although strongly flavoured with the composer's great respect for JS Bach's style. Koivusalo then returns to his theme about the three chorales, with a piece he composed specifically for the Espoo Cathedral and this recording. He proves to be a composer of note. His Chorale Suite for Organ (2013) has three movements, each dealing with one of the chorales mentioned above, mutating them harmonically and rhythmically, as well as using many tonal colours from the ample set of registers on the new organ. In the first movement, Ein feste Burg is robustly treated, with some suggestions of jazz (which would have been considered inappropriate in a church only a few years ago) and develops into some "serious conflict". The second movement takes Herzlich tut mich verlangen and transforms it into a solo flute melody, supported by a chordal undertow with tremulant, while the exuberant finale (with splashes of French Romantic influences) asserts the chorale exortation "To God alone on high be glory". The piece ends with what the composer calls "a whoop of joy"!

Completing the programme is a very unusual but apt piece from Otto Nicolai, not renowned as an organist (the opera Merry Wives of Windsor comes first to mind). He wrote Kirchliche Fest-Ouverture über ”Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott for an anniversary of Königsburg University, and scored it for orchestra and chorus. Liszt transcribed it for organ at the request of one of his pupils, for inauguration of a new organ. It is an exuberant setting of the chorale; beset with many tricky technical textures and giving any organ a very good work-out. Both Koivusalo and the new organ are fully up to the challenge (as are the pipes of the 32' untersatz (sub-bass) rank), and the Overture's spectacular ending is energizing to say the least.

This beautiful little cathedral building does not have the great echoing spaces of large continental cathedrals. Its forte is a warm and airy acoustic which has the advantage of preserving a great deal of tonal detail and subtlety in the organ sound. Engineer Mika Koivusalo's 5.0 microphone placing conveys the intimacy of the building and is never overloaded, even with the full organ sound. In surround sound especially, the depth of the organ gallery is clearly depicted across and behind the sound stage, as the various ranks of pipes behind the facade are sounded.

Production values are high. The booklet is in Finnish, Swedish and English, with a piece-by-piece commentary on the music by Petri Koivusalo, full of information without technical terms and easy to read (although the print is very small). There are many very fine colour photographs of the inside and outside of the Cathedral, useful in filling out the "you are there" sonics of one's imagination. The joy of the booklet, for me at least, is the pictorial story of the building of the organ from the earliest stages, in four pages of full colour photographs, the last dramatically showing the serried rows of pipes behind the facade. The elegant and understated front case of the organ when finished is also shown, with bright silver frontal pipe arrays (which are speaking pipes in this case, not faux as usual) and subdued gold panelling.

This is an imaginative, unusual and well-planned programme of music to display the merits of Espoo Cathedral's new organ and its fine organist, captured in 21st century technology in a building dating from the 1480s. Collectors of organ music won't want to miss this disc, which is a sonic wonder as well as a musical extravaganza.

Copyright © 2013 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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