Gustav Leonhardt: Elizabethan Organ Music

Record and Artist Details

Genre:

Instrumental

Label: Paradizo

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 49

Mastering:

ADD

Catalogue Number: PA0019

PA0019. Gustav Leonhardt: Elizabethan Organ Music

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Robin John Munday, Composer
Gustav Leonhardt, Piano
Loth to depart Giles Farnaby, Composer
Gustav Leonhardt, Piano
Fantasia Giles Farnaby, Composer
Gustav Leonhardt, Piano
Gloria tibi trinitas No 44 John Bull, Composer
Gustav Leonhardt, Piano
Prelude Orlando Gibbons, Composer
Gustav Leonhardt, Piano
A Grounde No 130 Thomas Tomkins, Composer
Gustav Leonhardt, Piano
Miserere William Byrd, Composer
Gustav Leonhardt, Piano

Gustav Leonhardt (1928-2012) had a long and extraordinarily productive career, and his discography includes not just the legendary harpsichord recordings but his extensive output on the organ as well. This album adds to the digital availability of one of his earliest organ recordings, from 1962, when he worked with the US-based audiophile label Cambridge to record harpsichord and organ works by Sweelinck, Froberger and the English virginalists.

The album appears never to have been transferred to digital media until now. Even so, the mastertapes are apparently missing, and what listeners have here is a recording made from a high-quality LP transfer. A booklet essay by Skip Sempé explains the strange odyssey of the recording which, he says, includes only three works that Leonhardt recorded elsewhere. So this is a substantial and welcome addition to the Leonhardt canon.

The sound quality is excellent, given the source from which it was taken, and the performances are as compelling as anything Leonhardt recorded. Two works by Byrd round out the programme, which includes pieces by Gibbons, Tompkins, Bull, Farnaby and John Munday. The Byrd can stand for the rest, measured, temperate but with an inner rhythmic cohesion, everything orderly but quietly urgent. Leonhardt’s registration in other pieces sometimes suppresses the more bustling lines, a decision that helps give these works more lyrical clarity. Peter Philips’s extensive Fantasia from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is particularly impressive as well, clear, perceptive and well plotted throughout.

It’s been a decade since Leonhardt died and his legacy only grows more impressive. It’s a happy accident of history that with this album we not only get more Leonhardt, but Leonhardt at his finest.

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