Friday 4th of September 2026 5 pm
Transformation
Program
Louis Vierne (1870–1937)
Hymne au soleil from 24 Pièces de fantaisie, Op. 53 (1926)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) | George Thalben-Ball (1896–1987)
Fugue in G minor, K. 401
Johanna Senfter (1879–1961)
Nun ruhen alle Wälder from Zehn Choralvorspiele, Op. 73
Jacques van Oortmerssen (1950–2015)
Nun ruhen alle Wälder (2013)
Zsolt Gárdonyi (b.1946)
Mozart Changes (1995)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Ein Orgelstück für eine Uhr — Fantasy in F minor, K. 608 (1791)
Johan Hammarström organ
Programme Notes
Louis Vierne was almost blind from birth. He first learned to play the piano at a very early age, but when, at the age of eleven, he heard the great César Franck play the organ, he was completely captivated. From then on, the organ became his calling.
In 1900, Eugène Sergent, organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, died, and his successor was chosen through a competition. Fifty candidates were admitted, and following the final round—held on 21 May and involving five organists—Louis Vierne was unanimously appointed organiste titulaire of Notre-Dame. He held the post for 37 years.
After a complicated leg fracture in 1906, Vierne had to rebuild his pedal technique from scratch. In 1907, he contracted a life-threatening case of typhoid fever; a few years later he developed glaucoma and eventually became completely blind. He was deeply affected by the separation from, and subsequent divorce from, his wife. Both his brother René and his son Jacques were killed in action during the First World War. Nevertheless, Vierne undertook concert tours in Europe and the United States.
Although he held France’s most prestigious organ post, the organ at Notre-Dame was in poor condition for much of his tenure. Eventually, he undertook a North American concert tour to raise funds for its restoration. The tour, which included performances on the celebrated Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia and its smaller sister instrument, the Wanamaker Auditorium Organ in New York, was highly successful, though physically demanding.
During his 1,750th concert at Notre-Dame, Vierne unexpectedly suffered a stroke and died at the organ console. His closest pupil, Maurice Duruflé, was present and assisted him during that final concert.
Together with the six organ symphonies, 24 Pièces de fantaisie ranks among Louis Vierne’s most important contributions to the French Romantic organ repertory. The collection is divided into four suites, each comprising six movements, and was composed in 1926–1927. In calling them Pièces de fantaisie, Vierne clearly alludes to Robert Schumann, whom he admired greatly and described as one of the greatest musicians. Like Schumann, Vierne brings together nature and humanity in this collection. In certain movements, he responds to the architecture of the cathedral and evokes sonic memories of his concert travels.
The title page of the manuscript indicates that the Deuxième suite was composed in Dinard, a Breton seaside resort, during August and September 1926, and in Paris in December of the same year. Vierne dedicated all its movements to friends and colleagues in the United States whom he had met on his concert tour in 1927. These dedications do not appear in the manuscript; they were added when the suite was prepared for publication after the tour had ended.
In the brilliant, radiant key of G major, Vierne composed his Hymne au soleil (Hymn to the Sun), a striking movement that opens with the full organ. The opening section contrasts with an almost Gregorian-sounding passage played on the organ’s foundation stops. The movement finally returns to full organ, now with the melody placed in the pedal part and accompanied by syncopated chordal figures. The hymn was dedicated to Ruth M. Conniston, who had studied organ at Yale University and later with Vierne privately in Paris.
“When I told Mr Stein that I wanted to play his organ, because the organ was what I liked best of all, he was very surprised that someone like me, such a great keyboard player, should want to play an instrument with no sweetness, no expression, no piano or forte, but which sounds the same all the time. That means nothing. To my eyes and ears, the organ is the king of all instruments.”
Letter to his father from Augsburg, 18 October 1777
There are many accounts of W. A. Mozart’s virtuoso organ playing. Mozart was only eight when his father wrote that everyone “thought his organ playing far better than his keyboard playing”. He played many of the finest organs of his day; reports survive of his performances on the Clicquot organ in the chapel of the Palace of Versailles and on the Müller organ in Haarlem.
Since the Middle Ages, small mechanical organs and carillons had been combined with clockwork. During the eighteenth century, when science and technology gained increasing prominence, these instruments became highly popular. Frederick the Great’s interest in mechanical instruments led C. P. E. Bach, W. F. Bach and Quantz to compose music for mechanical organs.
Mozart, too, took a great interest in composing for mechanical instruments. These works are the only surviving part of Mozart’s output for organ, meaning that none of them was originally intended to be performed by an organist.
The Fugue in G minor, K. 401, belongs to a group of polyphonic works Mozart wrote around 1782, after developing an interest in the study of Baroque music. We know that this work was played in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna by Schubert’s brother Ferdinand and by the cathedral organist Bibl. It was probably written as an exercise in the art of fugue, and the original manuscript does not specify which instrument Mozart had in mind. Here, the British organist George Thalben-Ball has arranged the manuscript for organ and also composed a brief introductory prelude.
Paul Gerhardt’s Nun ruhen alle Wälder is one of the most beloved evening hymns in the Lutheran tradition. The text was published in 1648 and is sung to the older melody Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, attributed to Heinrich Isaac. In Gerhardt’s hymn, the rest of nature and humankind at the close of day becomes the starting point for a prayer for protection, inner peace and the vigilance of the soul.
Johanna Senfter is one of the more intriguing figures of German late Romanticism. After studying piano and composition at the Frankfurt Conservatory, followed by studies with Max Reger in Leipzig, she developed a personal musical language firmly rooted in Reger’s dense counterpoint and chromatically rich harmony. Her Zehn Choralvorspiele, Op. 73, were composed in 1930 and intended for both concert and liturgical use.
In Senfter’s chorale prelude on Nun ruhen alle Wälder, the stillness of the evening hymn is clothed in a warm, concentrated late-Romantic sound world. The chorale melody emerges within a texture in which chromatic harmony and densely woven voice-leading deepen the text’s movement from the outward calm of evening towards a more personal prayer.
Jacques van Oortmerssen’s Nun ruhen alle Wälder, composed in 2013 in memory of Marie-Claire Alain, forms part of The Orgelbüchlein Project. Initiated by the organist William Whitehead, the project took as its starting point the 118 chorale titles Bach entered but never set in his Orgelbüchlein. Contemporary composers were invited, with complete stylistic freedom, to create short chorale preludes that respond to the question of how Bach might have approached these chorales in our own time.
Van Oortmerssen’s setting is minimalist and rigorously concise. A spare accompaniment, based on melodic fragments, hovers beneath the cantus firmus, which is played in the upper pedal part. The work was dedicated to Marie-Claire Alain, who died in the same year in which the piece was composed.
The Hungarian composer Zsolt Gárdonyi received his early musical education from his father, Zoltán Gárdonyi. His father had himself studied with some of the foremost musical figures of the twentieth century, including Paul Hindemith and Zoltán Kodály. After thorough studies at home, Zsolt continued his training in composition, organ and music theory at the conservatory in his native Budapest. At the age of 19, he received a prize in the University of Budapest’s composition competition. In 1980, he was appointed Professor of Music Theory at the University of Music Würzburg. After receiving the Bavarian State Prize for Young Composers, he launched an international career as both composer and organist.
The title Mozart Changes evokes the harmonic language of jazz. In international jazz terminology, “changes” denotes a chord progression. The work is based on two dance-like motifs from the finale of Mozart’s last piano sonata, the Sonata in D major, K. 576. They display a characteristic harmonic progression rooted in the eighteenth century, involving three descending fifths before arriving at the tonic—a pattern still used in jazz today. At first, we hear Mozart’s original music, but it is soon transformed into an entirely different sound world in which the eighteenth century meets the music of our own time. The work was commissioned by the Oklahoma Mozart Festival in Bartlesville, USA, and was premiered on 15 June 199519951995 by Eleanor Whitsett, to whom it is also dedicated.
There are many accounts of W. A. Mozart’s virtuoso organ playing. Mozart was only eight when his father wrote that everyone “thought his organ playing far better than his keyboard playing”. He played many of the finest organs of his day; reports survive of his performances on the Clicquot organ in the chapel of the Palace of Versailles and on the Müller organ in Haarlem.
Since the Middle Ages, small mechanical organs and carillons had been combined with clockwork. During the eighteenth century, when science and technology gained increasing prominence, these instruments became highly popular. Frederick the Great’s interest in mechanical instruments led C. P. E. Bach, W. F. Bach and Quantz to compose music for mechanical organs.
Mozart, too, took a great interest in composing for mechanical instruments. These works are the only surviving part of Mozart’s output for organ, meaning that none of them was originally intended to be performed by an organist.
Ein Orgelstück für eine Uhr (A Piece for Organ Clock)—the Fantasy in F minor, K. 608—was completed on 3 March 179117911791. It is one of the most magnificent creations in the entire organ repertory. The piece has a large-scale tripartite form: an opening overture and fugue, an Andante, followed by another overture and fugue. Both fugues are based on the same subject, but the final one also introduces a lively, fixed countersubject.
— Programme notes by Johan Hammarström