Jeremy Filsell plays works of Parisian composer and organist Gaston Litaize (1909-1991) on a new CD, Gaston Litaize, Music pour orgue, released in March on the Raven CD label. The CD is available as Raven OAR-147 from online retailers and for $15.98 postpaid worldwide from RavenCD.com.
Filsell plays the 64-rank Aeolian-Skinner at the Church of the Epiphany, Washington, D.C., where he is Director of Music and Organist. A stoplist of the enlaraged organ and its history are published in the CD booklet, as is Filsell’s essay on the composer. Writes Filsell in the essay, “Litaize nailed his colors to a neo-classical mast and thus revealed in his writing a Bachian transparency and contrapuntal luminosity; one that perhaps overshadows a strain of Romantic expression which lies at its heart.”
Organist of St-François-Xavier in Paris 1946 until his death, Litaize was blinded shortly after birth. He studied and taught at the National Institute for the Blind in Paris and also studied at the Paris Conservatoire. His teachers included Dupré, Vierne, Henri Büsser, Charles Magin, and Adophe Marty. For 30 years beginning in 1944, he directed religious radio programming for Radio France. After retirement from the radio position, he taught in the regional conservatory at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France.
Works on the CD include Final from Messe pour tous le temps; Variations sur un Noël Angevin; Final; Arches; Épiphanie; Prèlude et Danse Fugée; Reges Tharsis; Final from Messe pour Toussaint; and eight of the 24 Préludes Liturgiques.
For information: www ravencd.com
