Search - Ned Rorem (Composer); Catharine Crozier (Performer) :: Organ Works by Ned Rorem

A FANTASTIC RECORDING

Kim L. Armbruster | SAN FRANCISCO, CA United States | 07/01/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Top notch music played impeccably by one of the 20th century's greatest organists. Highly recommended to add to your Rorem collection, or as an introduction.



I would have to disagree with another reviewer who finds "Views from the Oldest House" inferior. It's just different. Unless slightly more accessible is inferior.



I would have to agree that the organ isn't all that satisfying. It's rather brittle to the point of not musical, in addition to what the other reviewer said. However, it certainly has clarity, if you want to study the score, and certainly Crozier does a good job overcoming the instrument's restraints.



I also would give the recording five stars, except for the organ. Five stars for the performance, though!"

Fantastic Avant Garde!

Sesquiltera | Xenu City, Teegeeack | 03/07/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This CD is such a delight! Ned Rorem is one of America's foremost contemporary classical composers. This compact disc displays his most spiritual and mystical work: "A Quaker Reader," wich teaches us great lessons in the Anglo-American spirituality of the Quakers. The music though is not in Quaker style. It's in Ned Rorem style, that is to say a great and ellaborate world of sounds, simplistic as well as highly complex. Titles such as: "A Secret Power" and "Mary Dyer did hang as a flag" reveal to us that Rorem had something diffrent to tell than most other composers.
The latter is a very strange piece of music wich tells the story of a Quaker who is hung on the gallows. The tundering reverbs in the pedals illustrate the spastic shaking of the feet of Mary Dyer (what an idea!). The second work that can be heard is "Views from the Eldest house". Though somewhat inferior in comparison to "A Quaker Reader", it are some nice paintings of the setting of the rural American country life. Catherine Crozier has a great and almost perfect way of performing. Every note is hit with an exact ammount of precision. Although Crozier has long passed her seventies, she plays like a bazooka! There's not a passage that's to agressive for her, nor a passage where she laks in overall balance.It would have rated this CD with 5 stars if it weren't for the lousy organ itself. The music gets much to flat, crushing the entire imagination of the listener. Sounds drown in themselves and other chords, chamades are to much on the foreground and don't even get me started about the Pedal-organ! it is way to soft to compete with the music on the manuals (no 32's!).I still think you should buy this CD. Just imagine Crozier playing on an Aeolian-Skinner or a Fisk organ instead of a Moller organ...."