Rheinberger - Choral & Organ Music | Brilliant Classics 96766

Rheinberger - Choral & Organ Music

£9.45

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Label: Brilliant Classics

Cat No: 96766

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 28th April 2023

Contents

Artists

Manuel Tomadin (organ)
Il Polifonico

Conductor

Fabiana Noro

Works

Rheinberger, Josef

Charakterstucke (12), op.156
» no.11 Abendfriede
Mass in B flat major, op.172
» III Ave Maria
Mass in F major, op.190
Organ Sonata no.19 in G minor, op.193

Artists

Manuel Tomadin (organ)
Il Polifonico

Conductor

Fabiana Noro

About

In his own lifetime (1839–1901), Joseph Rheinberger was more sought after as a professor of organ and composition than he was recognised as a great composer. His roll-call of students at the conservatoire in Munich was long and impressive, including Humperdinck, Wolf-Ferrari and Furtwängler. However, Rheinberger produced a significant catalogue of sacred music in particular, concentrated on choir and organ. Sometimes unfavourably compared to Brahms, he is more usefully regarded as a south-German Fauré – for the gentle contours of his melodies and the softly rounded quality of his choral writing.

The principal work on this new album is the Mass for four-part men’s chorus which he composed in 1898, and which has become a staple of the male chorus repertoire around the world. By no means as staid or sober as its scoring might suggest, the Mass is a work of resonant beauty and sweetness, a concise and elegant demonstration of Rheinberger’s melodic gifts and his embodiment of Catholic values in the secular musical culture of late 19th-century Germany.

This newly recorded album makes an ideal introduction to the world of Rheinberger through its diversity. The Mass is complemented by a radiant partsong, Abendfriede, and a setting of the Ave Maria all the more affecting for its devotional simplicity, close in spirit to the early motets of Bruckner.

Finally, Manuel Tomadin plays the grandest and best-known of the 20 organ sonatas composed by Rheinberger throughout his career. Cast in three movements, no.19 opens with an imposing Allegro, while the intimate central Provenzalische finds Rheinberger at his most beguiling as he taps into the folkloristic culture of German Catholicism. Prefaced by a broad introduction, the chromatic counterpoint of the finale approaches Reger for hard-won transcendence, played here on the organ of the Church of Maria Ausiliatrice in the Slovenian town of Vipava.

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