Pizzicato

Tribute to Betsy Jolas
Angela Metzger, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Titus Engel

This album features four organ works by French-American composer Betsy Jolas (born 1926), a student of Olivier Messiaen. The first piece is the organ concerto Musique d’Hiver, a work for organ and chamber orchestra premiered in 1971. Often referred to as a « reference work for experimental musical thinking, » this piece features percussion as a prominent sound source alongside the organ. Also performed are the solo works Musique de Jour and Leçons du Petit Jour, organ meditations on the beginning of the day, birdsong, and the slow awakening of the world. The last piece, Trois Études Campanaires, is a set of three organ studies. They are described as « sounding bell studies » that « take on a new dimension on the organ of St. Antonius Düsseldorf-Oberkassel with its extraordinary percussion registers. » These pieces represent Jolas’s music, which is characterized by great grace and imagination. In them, Jolas uses extended instrumental techniques with great sensitivity, a hallmark of her work.

Organist Angela Metzger is an excellent interpreter throughout this program, having assimilated Jolas’s sound world and bringing it closer to listeners with her highly rhetorical playing.

Norbert Tischer

 

Pizzicato, 31.07.2025