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Voices of the Frescoes - Gembalski

Voices of the Frescoes - Gembalski

Musicon  MSCD 052

Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid

Classical - Instrumental


Anonymous, Warsaw Organ Tablature (XVII c.): Preludium primi toni No.1; Fuga No.39; Toccata tertio toni No.19
Johann Pachelbel: Fuge in C major; Fuge in G minor; Aria quarta
Johann Philipp Krieger: Toccata und Fuge in A minor
Johann Krieger: Präludium in A minor; Ricercar in A minor
Franz Xaver Murschhauser: Präambel und Fuge in D minor; Präambel, Fuge und Finale in D minor
Bernardo Pasquini: Toccata; Ricercare; Introduction e pastorale
Johann Jacob Froberger: Canzone Terza in F major
Johann Sebastian Bach: Pastorale in F major, BWV 590
Julian Gembalski: Chorale variations in stilo antico “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland”

Julian Gembalski (organ of St. Joseph, Krzeszów)

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Review by John Miller - January 3, 2017

"Voices of the Frescoes" - what a poetic title for a baroque organ playing in a church of the Baroque. It certainly applies to churches of the Cistercian Abbey Complex of Krzeszów, which is close to the south-west Polish-Czech Republic border. The monastery was founded in 1242 by Benedictines and run by Cistercians from 1242-1810. Inside the monastery estate, from 1692-1695, building of the Church of St. Joseph The Betrothed took place, and the internal artistic decoration followed from 1693-1696, mostly by the well-known Michael Willman and his workshop. You can see, from the fine coloured photographs in the booklet and digipak folds, how splendid St. Joseph's church is, particularly in its much praised frescoes, attracting pilgrims.

The organ, with casing beautifully integrated into the baroque interior of the church, was built in 1695 by Jacob Ullrich. It was rebuilt and repaired in the 19th century. Presently it has 8 manual voices and 2 pedal voices (16' and 8') listed in the SACD booklet. There is a short octave manual and the system works by mechanical tracker action. A magnificent casing of ornate black towers, hold the non-playing silvered pipes and the whole case is laden with golden statues of musical scenes.

"Only 10 voices!" Many collectors might ignore this issue; they want organs to be much louder and larger. But listen to this SACD for just a few minutes and you realise that the sound is "pure organ". In fact the full organ, with all 10 voices, sounds as magnificent to me as many much larger organs; indeed the St Joseph plein jeux is deeper and warmer because the ear can pick up each strand of sound which makes up the chorus. The organ sound is also positively added to by the acoustics of the church, where the myriad of curved surfaces influence the reverberation, which has a smooth decay of about four minutes, giving an airy touch to each note. The solo voices particularly are given some beautiful tones in the large and ornate building. Note that this SACD is rightly in Musicon's "True Ambience Series" in their catalogue.

Julian Cembalski, the organist, has devised a fine programme of pieces which are not only wonderful to hear, but informative for any fans who have interest in the history of organs. It begins with three pieces from an early source: Anonymous, Warsaw Organ Tablature (XVII c.). Tablature is the numerical notation of music before the lines of later scoring (guitarists still use a version of it). Since early tablature only gave the main aspects of a composition, the rest of it was added by the performer by improvisation.

The body of the recital is devoted to various composers in the South German or Central German organ styles during the Baroque, e.g. Johann Pachelbel, Johann Philipp Krieger and his brother Johann Krieger. Some of the German organists visited Italy, and Italian styles began to be added all across Germany (Froberger) and Bernardo Pasquini. The Italian influence also had its Toccata, Ricercare, Canzone, Introduzione and Pastorale styles moved far up into the organ works of the north. Note again - there are several Pastorales, including a lengthy, complex one by JS Bach, and of course in Baroque times, Pastorale meant Christmas music. I suspect it is not by accident that this SACD was issued just before Christmas! At the end of the programme, Gembalski's own "Chorale variations in stilo antico 'Nun komm der Heiden Heiland'" is a tour de force with an improvised set of variations which are memorable and round off the whole programme wonderfully.

Julian Gembalski's playing and control of the organ is of the highest. He clearly knows the value of the St. Joseph's minimal organ, and fluidly gets various sounds and effects with purity and precision, together with a range of beauty, emotion and humour which is breath-taking. His performance of the Bach Pastorale F-Dur, BWV 590 is a highlight for me. This is a fragment from an unknown source, perhaps a particular occasion. It resembles no other work or keyboard, yet each movement in it has one Bach idiom or other. For example each section subtly incorporates a pastoral drone in the pedals, being used in different ways. Also, Gembalski's virtuoso pedal runs and florid scales in higher keys are spectacular indeed. The effect of his direct sound is magnified by the airy resonance of the church, recorded very realistically with minimal mechanical noises from the organ. The capture was 5.0 in multichannel at 24/96kHz.

Casting my eye over Gembalski's career listed in the booklet always amazes me with the range of his musicology. Here is a highly selected list: Graduate of the Music Academy in Katowice - diplomatic of two specialities with honours in 1975). Master's Course with professor Flor Peeters in Belgium. Conducts intense artistic, scientific and pedagogical activities. Many awards, including decoration of "Pro Ecclesia et Pontiface" medal by Pope John Paul II. Recorded over 40 CDs. Writes many works on history of organs. Works on preservation and protection of historic organs. Now a teacher in Katowice and also runs the Dept. of Organ and Church Music. Etc, etc.

I hope that organ disc collectors will not avoid this SACD just because of the small range of its featured organ; if you weren't told of this I warrant that you would not have guessed. As well as a finely-thought out programme and the highly musical performances of its organist, the SACD issue's triple-gate digipak is very well presented artistically. Its free booklet has biographies and discussion of each track in Polish, English and German. The only thing I missed was information about the organ's overall tuning. Without doubt this is my disc of the year, and it already has been in my player a number of times with growing pleasure. This is "pure organ" at its best, excellently recorded.

Copyright © 2017 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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