Jehan Alain

J. S. Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in D minor is the centrepiece of this programme: ‘This music seems absolutely modern to me: a continuous, endlessly developing thread, giving it an almost hypnotic aspect… These adjectives also belong to the vocabulary of today’s music, whether it is “popular”, as in techno, or “art music”, as in the so-called repetitive or minimalist movement’, says Simon-Pierre Bestion. Two hundred and thirty years after Bach, Górecki wrote a harpsichord concerto in the same key, using it ‘as a very rhythmic and extremely stealthy instrument’. John Adams, a leading figure of the American minimalist movement, composed Shaker Loops in 1978: ‘This masterpiece takes on a special interest because we play on instruments with gut strings. That gives the music a very special texture.’ Bach’s Passacaglia (‘a single musical theme heard forty-one times’) and Jehan Alain’s Litanies complete this programme, which brings together the Bestion brothers, with Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas as soloist in the concertos.

...Wolfgang Rübsam is internationally known through his highly acclaimed recordings of organ works from the Baroque and Romantic periods. He has published more than 130 recordings, including two recordings of the complete organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach, the complete organ works of Dietrich Buxtehude, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, César Franck, Louis Vierne, and Jehan Alain, as well as recordings of Franz Liszt, Johann Pachelbel, and Max Reger. Currently, he is completing a recording of the 20 organ sonatas of Josef Rheinberger. In addition, he has recorded a major part of the keyboard works of J.S. Bach on modern Bösendorfer pianos. !!! In addition to his musical career, Wolfgang Rübsam is working as a licensed barber with barber shops in Saarbrücken, Germany, and Valparaiso, Indiana. !!!

Wolfgang Rubsam (Organ, Piano) - Short Biography

On this new release, Erica Nygård and Niels Burgmann display their core repertoire, which focuses mainly on music from the 20th century. Besides concentrating on works originally written for flute and organ they also perform arrangements of important compositions from the flute repertoire. Erica Nygård is the principal flautist in the Vaasa City Orchestra and Niels Burgmann is a church musicin in the congregation of St. Matthew, Helsinki. Both artists have built up successful careers as chamber musicians and soloists.