By its subtitle of “Donati plays Donati” I figured this was a program of contemporary organ works, but I hadn’t expected it to be such a quirky and fun exploration of music by a composer (and a fine organist) with a highly-developed sense of humor. Organist Donati, born in 1949 and based in Torino, Italy, composes on the side. He loves compositional challenges and while he has an impressive capability to accurately ape all sorts of styles and fashions, he does it with an obvious relish and sense of irony.
The 17 tracks are all very short, some only a bit over a minute. He clearly has a love of jazz, of music imbued with the influence of various folk cultures, and of capturing the particular style of various famous composers. Some of Donati’s works reminded me of some of Glenn Gould’s compositions, such as So You Want to Write a Fugue? in their clever humor laid over a skillful and complex musical structure. His Preludio in do pomposo, for example, is a caricature of opera transcriptions arranged for the pipe organ, while it good-naturedly comtemplates a past era from a distance. In his Fugue on “Fate furb” Donati takes Bach’s idea of translating his name into notes (as in B-A-C-H) and applies it to a Fugue for Four Voices based on the epithet in Italian ‘Fate furb’ (halfway between “You’re kidding!” and “Go to hell”).
The short piece entitled Impromptu alludes to the ragtime jazz style of Scott Joplin. Several of the pieces are homage to or dedicated to a friend or colleague. In C flat is a typical Donati lark – almost nobody writes anything in C flat – the most difficult to play of all keys! But he just did it because he wanted to show he could. The closing Prelude e Boogie features an amazing ostinato on the pedals (too bad there’s not a video of that!) The completely-confused English liner notes (full of wrongful computer translation of various punctuation symbols) say that “perception of an Afro-American sound on the organ is a truly curious effect.” Guess the writer has never heard the Fats Waller pipe organ recordings or the terrific BASF organ LP, St. Peter Power.
The Tamburini organ is in the Church of St. Francesco of Assisi in Torino and was completely restored in 2004 from its original installation in 1977. The reverb information is considerable and translates well to Dolby ProLogic II. This is definitely not your standard pipe organ recital, and more’s to its credit!
TrackList: Que pasa?, Preludio in do pomposo, Kleine Fuge super “Fate furb,” To-tune, Selva chiara selva oscura, Requiem per un uomo di carattere, in B. e in S., Impromptu, in C flat, Il canto del mattino, Grand’Offertorio brillante, Awake to Life!, Scherzo Fantasia, Etude for Norma, Toccata, Symphonia Organica No. 1, Preludio e Boogie
– John Sunier
