Its fate after the February earthquake remains unknown, but Christchurch Town Hall’s Rieger organ shines here in the hands of Martin Setchell.
THE RIEGER ORGAN OF CHRISTCHURCH TOWN HALL, NEW ZEALAND, Martin Setchell (Priory/Ode). Priory is a well-established English label specialising in organ and seeking fringe repertoire from its players. It is a feather in Setchell’s cap to be invited. His fringe mostly explores the French organ school. Première Symphonie in E flat Op 20 by Lazare-Auguste Maquaire, a student of Charles-Marie Widor, has structural guts. Its monothematic unity and contrapuntal strength shine through, with Setchell exploiting the Rieger organ’s wide range of clearly defined colours. Jehan Alain’s moving Litanies is the emotive masterpiece. Setchell is especially poignant where Alain shows reasoning reaching its limits and Christian faith taking over. Setchell amusingly colours the personalities of the seven Sisters in Jean Francaix’s Suite Carmélite. It’s not hard to tell who the Mother Superior is. Jules Grison’s flamboyant Toccata in F with its conscious homage to Bach’s popular Fugue in D minor is the ideal showpiece for showing up Setchell’s wide experience as the country’s premier organ globetrotter. Fresh repertoire, appealingly played. Fine programme notes. A winner – and a stirring reminder of the Rieger, whose fate in the February 22 earthquake remains unknown.
MENDELSSOHN: STRING QUARTETS VOLUME 3, New Zealand String Quartet (Naxos). This, the last volume of the complete quartets, kicks off with the NZSQ’s ebullience propelling the strong dramatic sweep in the outer movements of the outstanding Op 44 No 3. The remainder sweeps up bits and pieces such as the ominously titled Quartet No 0, routine juvenilia apart from a fugal finale where Mendelssohn at 14 manipulates three subjects with deftly precocious counterpoint. A tema con variazione Op 81 and scherzo Op 81 No 2 are fully mature fragments sketched for an intended new
quartet in his final year. The series has been strongly received overseas, too. Justly so. The NZSQ is international calibre.
BOSSA NOVA AROUND THE WORLD, Various (Putumayo/Ode). Commonly nicknamed “cooled down samba”, this urbanised Rio bossa of the 1950s by visionaries such as Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes has now attained a global reach. This CD has credibly written bossas from such places as Serbia, Norway, Korea and Portugal … and, oh yes, one or two Brazilian ones. Cosmopolitanism widens their resource, such as the inventive scoring of the French example, the wider melodic breadth of the Cape Verde/Portugal piece, and Serbia’s Menina Moça, with Dusko Goykovich’s melodically rich trumpet solos and the fusion of bossa with Balkan metrically irregular folklore and gypsy influences. It comes with an informative 18-page English/Spanish booklet accurately translated. Recommended.