Mendelssohn : Six sonates pour orgue Opus 65 Digipack

Description

Passionate about the music of Bach, Mozart, and the baroque repertoire, Mendelssohn developed a love for the organ from a very young age. At eleven, he signed his first opus, a short prelude, noble and austere. Throughout his short life, he would compose a significant number of works for the pipe organ, including these six sonatas for organ, the pinnacle of this corpus. The form of these sonatas is derived from Bach's trio sonatas, as well as Handel's compositions in the tradition of the Voluntary, a genre favored by the English. Three or four contrasting movements, slow-fast followed or not by a fugue. Sonatas 1 and 4 are designed like symphonies, the 6th sonata uses a famous Lutheran chorale and adheres quite faithfully to Bach's style (Chorale with variations), while the 2nd and 5th are modeled on the English style. The young organist Benjamin Righetti at the controls of the organ in Fribourg chooses a deliberately refined registration that, without detracting from the color and contrasts of the music or the specificity of the Fribourg instrument (creamy or resonant and nasal tones that would suit Titelouze or Grigny perfectly), gives us a pure version of these scores, full of light and verticality. (Jérôme Angouillant)