'Festive Postlude' by Graham Twist скачать в хорошем качестве

'Festive Postlude' by Graham Twist

It’s been a while since I posted to my YouTube channel. This summer seems to have been particularly busy and my ‘composing’ has therefore taken a bit of a back seat . . . but as Arnie infamously says in ‘The Terminator’ film . . . “I’ll be back” . . . and so here I am! A highlight of recent months for me was my trip to Vilnius, Lithuania. My dearest Australian organist friend, James Flores, had been invited to perform two recitals in the capital city during the ‘Kristupo Festivalis’, and as I will sadly never make it to Australia now I’m in my dotage (!), I realised my only chance to ever get to meet James would be to fly over to Vilnius for six days and attend both his recitals. The trip also enabled me to meet Vidas Pinkevičius and his wife, Aušra, who have been very supportive of my music-making over the years and who were wonderful hosts during the stay. The old town of Vilnius is very beautiful, great for exploring on foot, and the city has many glorious churches - as well as several splendid organs. In this upload, you can see three of the churches I visited. James’ first recital was on the three manual Oberlinger Organ in St Casimer’s Church (   • ORGAN RECITAL - ST. CASIMIR'S CHURCH, VILN...  ). His second recital was at the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is still under breathtaking restoration, but has a new two manual ‘Big Blue’ Januszkiewicz/Kalnins Organ (   • “Big Blue” Organ Recital | James Flores | ...  ). And we also visited the great organ at Vilnius University St. John‘s church, which has undergone several reconstructions (latterly by Casparini/Radavičius) and now has 3 manuals and 64 stops, making it the largest pipe organ in Lithuania. The organ was not fully operational during the visit as it was having a Barker-lever coupling action added, but I was honoured to be given a guided tour inside the instrument by the builder and enjoyed a little play as well! Other instruments were visited during our stay, so I found myself in ‘organ heaven’ to say the least! When I was trying out some of the instruments in Vilnius, I toyed with an improvisation that I first began to work on as an idea for some wedding music for my brother-in-law. However, before I began to start on any notation, his Swedish bride wisely settled on the ‘Allegro’ by Johan Roman as her wedding processional (already uploaded to my channel after the event), so my tentative compositional ideas were then left somewhat in abeyance. When James suggested I might work on the ideas he heard to create a finished piece of music, the result has now become my ‘Festive Postlude’ (and you might notice some sections having a ‘church bells ringing’ idea from when it was heading towards a wedding march!). It is my Vilnius memento for James and I was truly honoured when he agreed to be the dedicatee to this latest bit of ‘Twistery’. I had a brilliant time with him in Vilnius, lots of fun and laughter, and it was an adventure I shall treasure for the rest of my life. (You might be amused to catch a somewhat ‘tongue-in-cheek’ interview James uploaded to his channel when we were visiting a Vilnius shopping centre:    • INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM TWIST!  . I have one Australian organ sample set in my collection and so decided to record ‘Festive Postlude’ on the ‘Scots Pipe Organ Samples’ from Inspired Acoustics. The instrument is a symphonic virtual pipe organ chromatically sampled stop-by-stop from The Scots' Church in Melbourne, Australia. The organ was built by Rieger in 1999 and is undoubtedly one of the finest instruments on the continent. Due to its wooden structures, the church has relatively dry acoustics providing a crisp and articulate high-definition pipe sound, though there is the option to add a little extra reverberation if so desired. Sample sets can be very expensive, but Inspired Acoustics offer exceptional value for money and their products are well worth exploring. If you would like a (gratis) copy of the score, please request it through Facebook or drop me an email: [email protected] and it will be my pleasure to oblige! And . . . “I’ll be back” with more compositions for Christmas (hopefully!).