JUDITH BINGHAM (b.1952): Glass Beatitude, Annunciation IV, Angel Fragments, Hadrian’s Dream, The Three Angels, Missa Brevis “Videntes Stellam”, The Linnaeus Garden for Organ Duet (w/Jeremy Cole), Altartavla, The Everlasting Crown, Jacquet’s Ghost, Tableaux Vivants for Harpsichord (all First Recordings).

Description: This set usefully gathers together Bingham's considerable recent output for solo organ. Her idiom is tonal throughout, with greater or lesser degrees of chromaticism. Her music often draws inspiration from the past - chorale themes in Annunciation IV and The Three Angels, the French Baroque in Jacquet's Ghost (an extended reworking of a prelude by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre) and the kaleidoscopically multifaceted harpsichord piece, full of historical and musical allusions and cross-references Tableaux vivants, plainsong in Angel Fragments, with its humor and grotesquerie, inspired by mediæval French statuary. Linnæus Garden explores the unusual textures available two two organists at one instrument, in a work that is both structured, and organically free inside that structure. Bingham's magnum opus for organ, The Everlasting Crown, explores the intriguing construct of a royal crown containing some of the great gemstones of history, with their often macabre and ruinous histories, while the stones themselves retain their impassive and uncaring beauty. Here the composer lets her hair down in a theatrical suite of seven movements encompassing a variety of styles from Organo pieno grandeur via Messiaenic drama and cinematic atmosphere to the kind of solemn reverence found in her sacred works. 2 CDs. Stephen Farr (organs of St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, St. Albans Cathedral and Trinity College, Cambridge, harpsichord).