Variations on America
MDG 317 1809-2
Rudolf Innig
Walcker/Aeolian-Skinner Orgel
Methuen (USA)
Excerpts from the reviews
"Neue Musikzeitung" 6/2013 (nmz) - By Christoph Schulte im Walde
German-American cultural transfer on the organ: Rudolf Innig with "Variations on America"
It is hardly surprising that American art music, born in the 19th century, has European roots. But who is aware that it was above all the organ that achieved this important "cultural transfer"? Rudolf Innig recalls this fact with his CD, on which he brings together some of the most important representatives of American organ music.
Dudley Buck and Horatio Parker were just two of around 5,000 young people who were sent to Germany from the middle of the 19th century onwards to study, to "absorb" the European tradition and then return to their homeland. Buck and Parker became composers - and above all organists who had a formative influence.
Rudolf Innig, who has been one of the most renowned German organists for decades and has made impressive complete recordings of Messiaen, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Brahms, Schumann and Nowowiejski, opens his CD "Variations on America" with Dudley Buck's transcription of Gioacchino Rossini's "William Tell" overture. Later, the "Magic Fire" from Richard Wagner's "Walküre" can be heard - two examples of the fact that there was a great deal of music in 19th century America. In the 19th century, the organ was often used to bring famous and representative orchestral works to a wider audience. This music retains its fascination to this day, especially when the organ is played as grippingly and vividly as here.
Genuine organ compositions such as Dudley Buck's "The Star Spangled Banner" (a series of variations on today's American national anthem) and Horatio Parker's "Revery" reveal the composers' stylistic connection with Mendelssohn and Rheinberger. "Variations on America" written by Charles Ives when he was just 17 years old is completely different: a real daring ride across the organ keys. Ives sticks to tradition - only to counteract it again and again in a completely "crazy" way. A bold ten-minute piece whose pitfalls Rudolf Innig masters with bravura.
Innig then personally contributes a highlight as arranger: Gershwin's exciting "Rhapsody in Blue". Once again a bridge between the old and new world - and incredibly well done, subtly "orchestrated" and colorfully designed.
Last but not least, the choice of organ is also spectacular: Innig plays the mammoth work by the German Eberhard Friedrich Walcker, built for the Boston Music Hall, whose Opus 200 from 1863: the best German-romantic organ aesthetic, exported to the east coast and with 86 registers the largest organ on the American continent at the time. The instrument then went through an eventful history, its sound was "redesigned" several times and today stands half an hour's drive from Boston in the "Methuen Music Memorial Hall", a classicist building that was built around the organ. About half of the original Walcker substance is still there, the later neo-baroque and also the typical American ingredients do not play a major role in this exciting CD production. J
John Sunier, AUDIOPHILE AUDITION, July 10, 2013
Ever heard Rhapsody in Blue on a pipe organ? Here‘s your chance!
Recorded on the historic Walcker-Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ in Methuen, MA, this SACD presents an unusual American-centered program of organ music and comes out close to this nation's Fourth of July celebration. (Interesting and rather sad that it has to be recorded and distributed by a German record company.) The longest and most unusual selection is probably the closing over-19-minute transcription by the organist Rudolf Innig of Gershwin's famous Rhapsody in Blue. The organist says in the notes that he wanted to make the piece available to the instrument which was central to the development of an independent American music in the 19th century, and also have it heard on an instrument which nobody on either side of the Atlantic would expect to hear it. And that he does.
Dudley Buck was an important figure in American music in the latter part of the 19th century. Like many American musicians of that period, he studied for a time in Germany. He decided to transcribe the William Tell Overture to make it available to a larger audience that couldn't hear the classic work performed by a symphony orchestra. He had to make some cuts and adjustments—the storm scene, for example, is cut quite short—but overall it's quite an amazing transcription that works well.
Ives' famous Variations on America was written when the composer was only 17, and sort of provides the centerpiece for this program. The Wagner Feuerzauber doesn't at first seem to fit in here, but it illustrates the transcribing of famous European orchestral pieces to the pipe organ to reach a larger audience in America. Its transcriber, James Rogers, was a well-known organist and composer in the U.S. who wrote many works for chorus and for organ. His transcription rather closely follows Wagner's music.
I've taken to running most pipe organ multichannel recordings from the analog output of my Oppo deck and thru the analog option of my preamp, in order to use the ProLogic IIz height channels. They impart a fine impression of the Methuen concert hall and the organ's sound, including the more vertical sounds. This will probably have an even more enhanced verticality when I try it out on a 2+2+2 speaker layout later, with additional small speakers over the front left and right speakers.