Gail Archer: Chernivtsi: Contemporary Ukrainian Organ Music
Meyer Media

Even if you're unfamiliar with the six nineteenth-to-twenty-first century Ukrainian composers whose works appear on Gail Archer's ninth album, Chernivtsi, their material enthralls when performed by the acclaimed organist. While her renderings exemplify all of the musicality for which she's become known, a key part of the recording's appeal has to do with the glorious sound of the Riegger-Kloss organ which she played at the Armenian Catholic Church in the Ukraine city.

In presenting Eastern European organ works, Archer, a choral conductor and educator as well as organist, performs a valuable service to both composers and listeners. Yet while that is the case, the fifty-four-minute album is more than an educational exercise: it satisfies on purely musical grounds with the visceral impact of its compositions and treatments. Three of the six composers are no longer with us—Iwan Kryschanowskij (1867-1924), Mykola Kolessa (1903-2006), and Tadeusz Machl (1922-2003)—whereas Bohdan Kotyuk (b.1951), Viktor Goncharenko (b.1959), and Svitlana Ostrova (b.1961) are very much alive.

Kotyuk's vibrant Fanfare lives up to its title with declamatory statements setting a spirited tone for the album, the gleam of the organ captivating from the outset. Softer by comparison is his Benedictus: Song of Zachariah, a lyrical setting marked by deft oscillations between hands and pedals and dynamic contrasts between bass and treble patterns. Apparently influenced by organ improvisational techniques he observed in Paris, Machl's Piece in Five Movements is the recording's only multi-part work. Its sections are bite-sized, however, which makes it a less towering creation than its structure suggests. There's a discernible ambiguity in the harmonic language deployed by Machl that both bolsters the work's contemporary character and enchants the listener as each movement advances through multiple stages before concluding with a major or minor harmony.

Goncharenko's Fantasia distinguishes itself from the others with its ABA structure, the dense layered chords of the central section contrasting with the peaceful, almost hymn-like quality of the others; memorable too is the child-like melody with which the opening and closing sections end. Brooding by comparison, Kolessa's Passacaglia requires the organist to juxtapose thick chords with rapid figures and double pedaling; Archer, of course, makes it all sound easy, the listener never sidetracked by the technical challenges involved and instead wholly immersed in the vertiginous musical world created. Something of a theme-and-variations piece, Ostrova's Chacona follows an initial voicing of the figure in block chords with an improv-driven treatment, a buoyant triplet version, and a concluding chromatic episode (capped by an ear-catching flourish, no less)—all in an action-packed three minutes.

December 2020