Harmonium

Franz Liszt achieved great fame throughout Europe at a young age, primarily through his virtuoso performance on the piano. Then, at a more mature age, he turned away more and more from the secular world and found deeper insight and inspiration in faith. Likewise, other keyboard instruments such as the organ and harmonium gained in importance for the composer.

The contemporary music ensemble Cikada is proud to present the album “Harmonium Repertoire” with music of Lars Petter Hagen.

"Saint-Saëns Duos for Harmonium and Piano, is performed by award-winning acclaimed classical Accordionist Miloš Milivojević and Pianist Simon Callaghan.

That the harmonium was not just an instrumental fringe phenomenon or an exotic stylistic device for Franz Liszt is proven by his numerous works expressly (exclusively or alternatively) scored with harmonium. As is well known, he owned several such instruments himself and certainly contributed to their tonal and technical development, as is also and especially true for the piano and the orchestra.

Harmonium and piano… this is an extraordinary connection. There are a lot of original compositions, especially by french composers, as well as many impressive transcriptions of well-known pieces by great composers.

As far as Franz Liszt's compositional output for keyboard instruments is concerned, the virtuoso pianist and later cleric not only considered the piano, but also the organ: in addition to some smaller pieces, a handful of quite larger works exist specifically written for the church organ. A significant number of his late sacred compositions, however, are not conceived for only one particular keyboard instrument, but ‘works‘ - following Liszt's explicit indications - on various instruments: piano, organ or harmonium. These pieces must also be taken into account if one wants to fully penetrate the oeuvre of the master as an interpreter.

Camille Saint-Saëns was 17 years of age when he composed his first printed work, the Trois Morceaux, which blends charming melodic creativity with a spiritual character. Louis Vierne’s 24 Pièces en style libre are unquestionably some of this composer’s most successful and popular works. Divided into two collections, these pieces are impressive for their great expressive quality, being evocative of places and people known to Vierne, alluding to musical forms both antique and impressionistic, and ranging in mood from the fiery to the serene.

After Harmonium's second album, Si On Avait Besoin d'une Cinquième Saison, Serge Fiori's group kept on growing. From a three-piece folk-pop outfit, it had now reached the level of a rock band, including a drummer (Denis Farmer), a cast of guest musicians (reedist Libert Subirana taking the place of Pierre Daigneault, guitarist Robert Stanley, a choir including singer/songwriter Richard Séguin and Beau Dommage's Pierre Bertrand) and a full symphonic orchestra lead by Neil Chotem. L'Heptade (from "hepta" – seven) constitutes the pinnacle of the band's creativity.

Blind from the age of two, a prodigiously gifted student, Jean Langlais (1907-91) produced an immense quantity of music. His organ works alone exceed in number those of of JS Bach. Many have hardly ever been performed. Perhaps not more than half a dozen works are regularly played or recorded today, which is what makes this new complete survey of his organ music – the first ever attempted on record – both unique and invaluable, as the authoritative document of a high point in the distinguished lineage of the French organ heritage.