•●The Official Video Site of Concert Organist Xaver Varnus●•
The Varnus Organ Hall needs your help. We are asking the community's support to restoring and operating Varnus Hall, Canada's only private organ concert venue owned by Xaver Varnus, to provide a worthy home for organists, famous artists and young talent alike, from around the world to perform, and broadcast their concerts online. We are grateful to you if you can help our work with any donations. ca.gofundme.com/f/fundraising...
Xaver Varnus' first piano teacher was Emma Németh, one of the last pupils of Debussy. He has played virtually every important organ in the world, including those in Bach's Thomaskirche in Leipzig (2014), Berliner Dom (2013), Notre-Dame (1981), Saint-Sulpice (2006) and Saint-Eustache (1996) in Paris, National Shrine in Washington, D.C. (1985), and Canterbury Cathedral (2004), as well as the largest existing instrument in the world, the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia (1985). His Quadruple Platinum Disc winning album From Ravel to Vangelis (SONY, 2007), is the best-selling organ CD ever. As a Canadian citizen, Xaver Varnus resides in Berlin and Toronto. "Put simply, Varnus is a monster talent, every bit as stimulating and individual as the late Glenn Gould" (The Globe & Mail, Canada's National Newspaper). "He is one of the most influential figure in organ music in the early twenty-first century." (Mark Wigmore, The New Classical FM, Canada).
Booking & Enquiries: xavervarnus@hotmail.com
Although Bach’s best-known organ work is the toccata and fugue in D minor, many music historians dispute whether this work was indeed composed by Bach, since a manuscript written by his own hand has not survived to posterity. Devoted Bach fans know that Bach composed another toccata in D minor for organ, known as the “Dorian“ Toccata BWV 538. It is called Dorian, because it is notated in D minor without any flats in the key signature, along the lines of the dorian mode. The first performer of this masterpiece after rediscovery was Felix Mendelssohn, who knew the Dorian not as a toccata but as a prelude. We may conclude this from a letter written to his family in 1831 in which Mendelssohn requests to be sent copies of six different Bach organ works, including a “Prelude and Fugue in D Minor,“ which he identifies by notating the first two beats of the Dorian Toccata. Moreover, Felix at some point acquired a manuscript of the Dorian in the hand of the violinist Eduard Rietz, titled "Preludio e Fuga di Giov: Seb: Bach." Rietz, who died in 1832, was a Bach enthusiast and close friend of the Mendelssohns as well as being a professional music copyist. According to Fanny Mendelssohn’s catalogue, three of the Bach organ manuscripts that had been acquired by the Mendelssohns between 1823 and 1825 were copies by Rietz that he had donated to the family. It seems likely, then, that Rietz had also donated to the Mendelssohns his copy of the Dorian, and that Felix adopted the title of the work found in this manuscript. An exciting, dynamically rhythmical work, it concludes, like many toccatas, with an extended low pedal D and a majestic Buxtehude-like gesture for full organ.
This work was played with dignity and at a slower pace by the Mendelssohn generation. According to the research of Wim Winters, the paces of both Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, and Baroque authors were much slower. Only the virtuoso madness of the second half of the 19th century accelerated the tempo of the works, often distorting the logic of the harmony. The vanity of virtuosity destroys Bach’s music. There is too much electricity power and digital age in the contemporary Bach playing with too little silence from a long lost horse-driven society. At the end of Beethoven's life, the steam train was invented. Stephenson's 'Rocket' of 1830 travelled at just 40 km/h but some people thought this was dangerously fast and would not take the risk of going at such an unnaturally fast speed. It seems that people's perception of time has changed. If true, and given that theories concerning the Tactus are correct we can demonstrably hear that the original baroque and early romantic paces are in fact too slow for many people in 2020.
12 июн 2020
