Axel Ruoff: Complete Works for Organ, Volume Five
This final instalment of the organ compositions of Axel Ruoff (born in Stuttgart in 1957) presents two starkly contrasted sides of his musical personality: three of them, for voice and organ, are concerned with the spiritual – two even addressing head-on the issue of death itself – and are thus solemn and hieratic, whereas the concluding work is a whimsical, tongue-in-cheek set of variations on ‘Happy Birthday’, written as a present for Ruoff’s publisher on his 80th birthday.
Mari-Anni Hilander, soprano
Henri Tikkanen, baritone
Jan Lehtola, organ of the St. Paul’s Church, Helsinki
Listen To This Recording:
- Memento creatoris tui for baritone and organ (2001) (12:43)
Messe basse for soprano and organ (2015) (21:15)
- I. Introitus (6:02)
- II. Kyrie (5:46)
- III. Sanctus (2:40)
- IV. Agnus Dei (6:47)
In Hora Mortis. Sieben Totenlieder for medium voice and organ (2020) (28:31)
- No. 1, O bleibe treu den Toten (Storm) (7:31)
- No. 2, Lied der Toten (Werfel) (2:35)
- No. 3, O Herr, gib jedem seinen eignen Tod (Rilke) (3:55)
- No. 4, Vergiss mein nicht (von Knebel?, arttrib. Novalis) (3:39)
- No. 5, Ausgang (Fontane) (1:18)
- No. 6, Tiefstille (from Psalm 39, transl. Buber) (6:06)
- No. 7, Selig sind die Toten (Revelation 14:13)
Happy Birthday. Variationen und Fuga grottesca (2019) (16:02)
- Thema (0:58)
- Var. 1: Ländler (1:45)
- Var. 2: Danse populaire (0:27)
- Var. 3: Marsch (2:26)
- Var. 4: Andante (0:48)
- Var. 5: Choral (1:02)
- Var. 6: Walzer (1:20)
- Var. 7: Galopp (0:44)
- Var. 8: Interludium (0:43)
- Var. 9: Polka (0:32)
- Var. 10: Grave (1:07)
- Fuga grottesca (4:10)
First Recordings
Fanfare Magazine :
‘[Ruoff’s] corpus of works for this instrument (some of which add another instrument or voice) will surely live on to be performed and appreciated by audiences as long as music is still performed on this earth. […]
Soprano Mari-Anni Hilander has a beautiful instrument, and she captures both the meditative and more heart-wrenching soul-searching portions of both text and music in splendid fashion. […]
The music on this […] is lovely, and will lovingly envelop the listener with its suave sonorities and expressive lyricism. I’ve sung the praises of Finnish organist Jan Lehtola in my reviews of each of the previous four volumes, and I do so here as well. […] Highly recommended, as is everything this composer has ever written.
—David DeBoor Canfield, Fanfare Magazine, July/Aug 2024