MSR Classics' Ancient and Modern Portraits for Organ is a mixed solo organ recital that contrasts some of the oldest extant historical organ music with some twentieth and twenty first century music and a few things in between. It is performed by
Boguslaw Grabowski, organist at St. Mary's in Gdansk, playing a Lewtak organ at St. Joseph's Church "On the Hill" at Camillus, New York; this 2006 instrument incorporates a couple of ranks from an 1896 Casavant organ, presumably on site before the Lewtak builders arrived. The Casavant stops resound with the typical bright, assertive tone one thinks of in connection with nineteenth century American organ building; however, the Lewtak ranks are fashioned more in the French manner, resulting in an organ that is as mixed in sonority as the program is in content.
Variety there is, but the program is strongly slanted toward Polish music, and one of the oldest documents in the corpus of early keyboard music is the tablature of Polish composer Jan of Lublin, dating to between 1537 and 1548. An anonymous dance from this source is heard, including other obscurities such as a piece from the Peplin Tablature and composers such as Nicolas from Krakow, Diomedes Cato, Wojciech Dlugoraj, and other sixteenth and seventeenth century keyboard composers. For these works,
Grabowski uses only a few limited stops, such as surviving older instruments have, and while the sound of these registrations fits the music, there is a notable lack of power in these selections. The César Franck Cantabile in B, the Vierne Carillon de Westminster, and Mieczyslaw Surzynski's Improvisations on the Polish Hymn "Holy God" considerably carry more heft, and
Grabowski's own Improvisations on "Bogurodzica" is a visionary work that is quite satisfying and very present in the aural picture. While the performance of Alain's Postlude pour l'office de complies is fine, the familiar Litanies is slower than the average performance by a full minute. The slower speed does not illuminate the musical text, sounds halting, and drags a bit.
Litanies opens the album and does not start Ancient and Modern Portraits for Organ on the best foot it could have had; the program isn't put together in a very satisfying way and a diligent listener might want to shop around for a sequence that makes sense. However, its strong points are cogent ones and the organ has a beautiful sound, by turns creamy, spacious, and brilliant. One might have liked a whole disc of early organ music -- though it would not be commonly performed on such a large, modern instrument -- or a whole disc of
Grabowski originals; his contribution is that good. Nevertheless, while Ancient and Modern Portraits for Organ might not automatically move to the top of the organ fancier's want list, it should be somewhere on there as there is a fair amount to enjoy here.