Marian Sawa: Music for Organ

Marian Sawa (1937-2005) began serious studies at the age of 14 at the Salesian Organ School, Przemyšl, Poland. He toured actively as an organ performer and from 1966 taught organ at several prestigious schools. As a composer he wrote about 800 pieces in various genres, centred round his music for organ. His music builds on the Polish post-Romantic tradition, knitting fragments from folk tunes and hymns into his work, drawing strongly on Gregorian chant and traditional Polish material. Sawa’s personal and individual voice makes his music very recognizable and though little known in the West to date, he can be considered perhaps the greatest Eastern European organ composer of the 20th century. The pieces on this album, composed between 1971 and 2005, demonstrate vividly the range, variety and often enormous power of his compositions. Carson Cooman (b.1982) is an American composer with a catalog of hundreds of works in many forms – ranging from solo instrumental pieces to operas, and from orchestral works to hymn tunes. His music has been performed on all six inhabited continents. As an active concert organist, Cooman specializes in the performance of contemporary music. Over 300 new works have been composed for him by over 100 composers from around the world, and his organ performances can be heard on a number of recordings of which this is his fifth for Divine Art. This recording of the exquisite Fleiter organ (2014) at St. Ludgerus, Billerbeck, was made using the Hauptwerk remote digital access system.