Camille Saint-Saëns observed quite early on that music just flowed out of him and this 34 CD set marking the centenary of his death proves the point, if for no other reason that while it is comprehensive in scope it still does not include everything – even with all the operas omitted…
The title, familiar from Handel’s Messiah, continues of course. Why do all the nations rage so furiously together? And that is the point. Stephen Powell’s tour du monde is a gesture of defiance against international conflict, a celebration of the riches of art song, wherever one calls home…
Although Pancho Vladigerov (1899-1978) is a composer whose music has not sustained a big international reputation, in his native Bulgaria he is highly regarded. Apart from other achievements, in his twenties he was one of the founders of the Varna Summer Music Festival, one of Europe’s oldest and still most distinguished annual events…
The very difficulties that made Debussy’s second book of Preludes seem confusing in 1913 are those that make them so appreciated today. They are clearly 20th century and their disjointed, episodic character, moving in fits and starts between fragmented ideas, looks forward to a sound world in the 1920s that Debussy never lived to see…
Writing for organ was not really Schumann’s thing – nor was delving into the neo-baroque world of Bach, at least not to the same extent as his contemporary Mendelssohn, so it is interesting that he wrote his only two substantial pieces in the genre in 1845; the same year that Mendelssohn was writing his organ sonatas. No doubt a true scholar will tell me if that was only coincidence…