In selecting essential organ masterworks by
Jehan Alain and
Maurice Duruflé, organist
William Whitehead points up some interesting connections between the two composers. Not least of these is their shared fascination with asymmetrical or additive rhythms, and
Whitehead strongly emphasizes this feature in his vigorous performances on Dances of Life and Death. If organ music ordinarily seems four-square and solemnly hymn-like, then prepare to hear some of the most athletically rhythmic organ music ever written.
Alain's intensely energetic and ecstatic pieces dominate the program, and no work here is more propulsive or powerful than Litanies (1937),
Alain's most famous and influential composition. A quotation from Litanies appears in
Duruflé's Prélude et Fugue sur le nom d'Alain (1942), and the flexible rhythms and flowing figurations of this tribute indicate his complete sympathy with his late friend's work. But note also
Duruflé's Danse lente (1932), which seems to anticipate
Alain's style in its obsessive reiterations and irregular patterns.
Whitehead performs on the organ in Auxerre Cathedral, designed by Dominique Oberthür in 1986 to incorporate French Classical and Romantic stops and modern mechanisms, reproducing sonorities and effects familiar to
Alain and
Duruflé. The recording's quality is clear and scrupulously free of noises, except for some faint bird calls in the distance.