1. Fantasie ispanica, for piano: I. Preludio. Introduzione. Con fantasia: libero e rapsodisticamente
2. Fantasie ispanica, for piano: II. Molto moderato
3. Fantasie ispanica, for piano: III
4. Fantasie ispanica, for piano: IV. Quasi habanera
5. Fantasie ispanica, for piano: V. Coda. Finale

Jonathan Powell – piano

It seems just one peculiarity among many in his biography that Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji developed an abiding fascination with Mediterranean culture -- partly because his mother claimed Spanish and Sicilian ancestry, but also because his belief in this heritage gave him an escape from the tedium of growing up in London. Early on, Sorabji dabbled with exotic themes in his Quasi habanera (1917), and this interest continued throughout his life, appearing even in the late piano work Villa Tasca (1979-1980). The Fantasie ispanica (1933) is an extravagant piece in five movements that plays on many of the Iberian mannerisms Sorabji absorbed, first from Debussy and Ravel, then later from Albéniz and Granados. Yet it is also freely layered and almost as fantastic as anything else in Sorabji's virtuosic oeuvre; it requires a pianist of extraordinary skill to play this elaborate maze with a proper balance of accuracy and atmosphere. Jonathan Powell wends his way through Sorabji's crisscrossing, chromatic lines and multi-stave textures with assured technique and delicate expression, and compellingly evokes Spanish dance styles, even though Sorabji's many idiosyncrasies make them seem remembered in a strange, Scriabin-esque dream of blurred clusters and hazy dissonances. Altarus' sound quality is fine, though a little lacking in depth. --- Blair Sanderson, Rovi

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1 	First Movement: Prelude. Passacaglia. Postlude 	34:35
2 	Second Movement: Introduction. Fugue. Code 		36:25
3 	Third Movement 	46:53

Kevin Bowyer - organ

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) was a British-born composer of Parsi and Sicilian descent. In 1936 he gave his last public performance as a pianist, in order to concentrate on composition and music criticism, reserving all rights for performance of any of his works, and only rarely granting such rights. He was voluminously prolific, not only in quantity but sheer length of works. The present Organ Symphony (written 1923-24) is nearly two hours in length; its third (last) movement alone is 46 minutes and 55 seconds on this recording (the entire second disc)! And this is modest compared to his perhaps most (in)famous work, the Opus Clavicembalisticum for solo piano, which takes as long as 4 & 1/2 hours to perform.

Sorabji was largely self-taught as a composer, studying the works of Liszt, Busoni, Szymanovsky and several others as he developed his own distinct language. His music is often dense, often intensely contrapuntal, freely dissonant, frequently grandiose in its rhetoric.

Kevin Bowyer shared the first complete public performance of this work with Thomas Trotter shortly before this recording was made entirely by Bowyer in 1988. It uses the 4-manual, 74-rank 1911 Harrison & Harrison organ of St. Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol, considered by some to be this firm's finest organ. Bowyer has gone on to perform this work further, as well as prepare a corrected version of the score, and produce an edition of Sorabji's (even longer!) 2nd Organ Symphony (there is also a yet longer 3rd!).

This album is a must-have for all Sorabji fans -- a rare breed of music-lover, indeed -- especially since the composer considered this to be his "earliest truly personal and mature work". It is also recommended to all interested in modern organ music; even though 1924 can now hardly be called "modern", this music still represents such a daring exploration of musical limits as to justify calling it "modern," in an important sense.

As one of the rare owners of the music's score (I was lucky to get one of the last copies before it went out of print), I have studied Bowyer's performance to some degree. The mere fact that he plays the piece at all, with any degree of accuracy, is an astonishing and enviable accomplishment. The complexity of the music (notated on four staves throughtout rather than the usual three) defies description, often sounding as if more than one person is playing at once. Furthermore, the technical demands are virtuosic in the extreme, not only as to velocity of notes, rhythmic complexity, but in the unthinkable demands on concentration and stamina required by the monstrous length of the work.

As to the album's presentation, I wish that the timings were given on the booklet or on the discs, and also that sections of the huge movements were individually cueable; the fact that the second disc consists of one immense band makes it very cumbersome to handle, especially for study purposes.

Even so, I rate this recording highly simply because it is the only recording available of a true monument of organ repertoire, and as such deserves appropriate recognition. --- Rodney Molnar-Pohdap, amazon.com

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Trois poèmes pour chant et piano
1. Correspondances (text by Charles Baudelaire)
2. Crépuscule du soir mystique (text by Paul Verlaine)
3. Pantomime (text by Paul Verlaine)

4. Chrysilla (text by Henri de Régnier)
5. Roses du soir (text by Pierre Louys)
6. The Poplars (text by Iovan Ducic)
7. L’heure exquise (text by Paul Verlaine)
8. Vocalise pour soprano fioriturata
9. I was not sorrowful (text by Ernest Dowson)
10. L’étang (text by Maurice Rollinat)
11. Hymne à Aphrodite (text by Laurent Tailhade)
12. Apparition (text by Stephané Mallarmé)

Trois Chants
13. Le Faune (text by Paul Verlaine)
14. Les Chats (text by Charles Baudelaire)
15. La dernière fête galante (text by Paul Verlaine)

Trois fêtes galantes de Verlaine
16: L'allée
17: A la promenade
18: Dans la Grotte

19: L’irrémédiable (text by Charles Baudelaire)
20: Arabesque (text by Shamsu’d-Din Ibrahim Mirza)

Elizabeth Farnum - Soprano (Vocal)
Margaret A. Kampmeier – Piano

Notorious for his Brobdingnagian piano works, many hours long and of mind-numbing difficulty (most famous of all being Opus clavicembalisticum), Kaikhosru Sorabji was also an adept miniaturist. At the start of his extraordinary career, around 1915-20, he wrote many songs, plus a few later, almost all for soprano and mostly to French texts. (His mother was a professional singer; he himself was a connoisseur of the soprano voice and a friend of Blanche Marchesi, among other famous names.) By turns languid, ecstatic, capricious and texturally and harmonically spangled, the 20 songs on this disc, premiere recordings all, display a gifted songwriter whose rapidly forming style fits intelligibly into the company of such contemporary post-impressionist exotics as Scriabin, Szymanowski, Ornstein or Cyril Scott. Sorabji’s favoured poets – Baudelaire, Dowson, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Louÿs – are pretty solidly fin de siècle, but his treatment of them borders at times on the Expressionist. The fantastic filigree of his piano parts will intermittently turn to a dancing mock-Baroque directness, as in the ‘Dernière fête galante’ from his last set of songs, written in 1941. The piano tone on Centaur’s recording is sometimes a bit thin, and Elizabeth Farnum shows occasional strain in some of the cruelly high-lying passages in Sorabji’s intricate and wayward vocal lines, but this is a very rewarding disc of totally unknown, highly individual and often very beautiful music. ---Calum MacDonald, classical-music.com

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