Leon Boellmann

Michal Kanka Classical cellist, born 1960 in Prague.

St. Thomas, dating back to the twelfth century, is a musical landmark for the city of Leipzig, in which renowned composers like Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner and Felix Mendelsson Bartholdy worked. Johann Sebastian Bach was the Thomaskantor here from 1723 to 1750, the world-famous Thomanerchor sings motets here every Saturday, and here resounds the wonderful music played on the instrument Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart once declared the "Queen of Instruments" and about which the poet Honore de Balzac said, "The organ is without a doubt the greatest, boldest and most magnificent of all instruments. It is an entire orchestra form which a skilled hand can demand everything." St. Thomas houses not one but two organs wtihin its walls. In 1889 Wilhelm Sauer built the organ, named after him, in the west choir loft. On the north gallery, the Bach Organ has stoody since 2000. The Sauer Organ has over 88 stops, and the Bach Organ, whose facade is adorned with the seal of the famous Thomakantor, has 61 stops. "Soli Deo Gloria" - Glory to God alone - is the motto by which Bach wrote his music.

Leon Böellmann (1862-1897) was born in the Alsatian town of Ensisheim. He moved to Paris after the Franco-Prussian War after which Alsace became part of Germany. In Paris, he studied organ, piano and composition at the Classical Music School, graduating from it with honors. After graduation, he worked as a teacher at school. His compositions brought him considerable recognition, and he would almost certainly have made a bigger name for himself if he had not died at the young age of 35. Presented on this album is his remarkable Cello Sonata Op.40, hailing from the late French Romantic period.

While no organists music bench would be respectable without dog-eared copies of the Suite gothique (especially its concluding, Toccata, no mere knock-off of Widors showier counterpart) and C minor Toccata, there are vanishingly few albums dedicated to the organ music of Léon Boëllmann (1862-1897), making this Brilliant Classics reissue of Piet van der Steens album all the more enticing a proposition to organ buffs. A short-lived contemporary of Louis Vierne, Boëllmann composed in most classical genres, notably chamber music, but it is his output for organ that has assured him immortality, for its hand-in-glove harmony with the instruments of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll that represented the high-point of French organ building in the Gothic style, never knowingly underequipped. Boëllmann wrote accordingly, to take advantage of the new French organs with their prodigious array of registral colours and dynamic variation. Beyond the imperishable but ubiquitous Suite Gothique, the album offers discoveries galore, in the pomp and circumstance of the little-known Fantaisie, the perfumed refinements of the selection from his liturgically focused Heures mystiques, the quietradiance of the G major Offertoire and the ingenious Carillon from the Douze pièces. The Prelude pastoral opening the Deuxième Suite is a real charmer, and deserves to stimulate a Boëllmann renaissance along with much else here. It was recorded in 1977 by Piet van der Steen along with most of the shorter pieces on the Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Augustinuskerk in Amsterdam (first issued as an LP by the Cantilena label), whereas the Suite Gothique and Heures Mystiques excerpts date from 2002, on the Schyven organ of the Church of Ss Peter and Paul in Oostend.