John Burge

Premiere: Isabelle Demers, Jean-Willy Kunz, Christian Lane, Olivier Latry organists with Serge Desgagnés percussion, at Maison symphonique, Montréal, PQ on November 22, 2016.

Duration: 12 minutes

Program Note: This arrangement of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero by John Burge was commissioned by the Orchestre symphonique de Montrèal for the Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique—a wonderful Casavant tracker pipe organ with an additional electric console for use on the stage of Maison symphonique.  Requiring four organists (with optional percussion), this arrangement uses two organists at each console.  The commission was initiated to coincide with the Orchestre symphonique de Montrèal 2016 Organ Competition as the final number on a concert featuring the judges of the competition.  At the two consoles were Isabelle Demers, Jean-Willy Kunz, Christian Lane, Olivier Latry.

Ravel’s original orchestral score is an incredible display of orchestral acumen given that the work is simply the repetition of two sixteen-bar melodies with ever increasing instrumentation and volume all progressing above a very static two-bar repeated rhythm.  The fact that the melodies are so easily recognizable helps to give music a somewhat engaging persona, especially at the beginning, but as the doublings and harmonizations increase in texture, the music becomes incredibly grandiose and almost appears to break down the walls of sound with the arrival of the brief modulation just before the ending (from C major to E major). Scored for a very large orchestral (winds in threes with 5 clarinets and three saxophones, large brass and percussion sections and ideally two harps), it is also an incredible show-piece to demonstrate the variety of registration options available on an instrument such as the Casavant installed in the OSM Maison symphonique. At the end, all four organists are not only playing handfuls of notes with both hands but are all using their feet as well to create as much volume as possible.

For those individuals wanting some technical background behind this arrangement, it uses the same rehearsal numbers employed by Ravel and matches the original in design and intent up until Rehearsal Number 13.  To economise somewhat, the orchestral music found at Rehearsal Numbers 13-15 has been omitted in the organ version but after this point, the organ music follows the orchestral original score to the end.  While the arranger personally favours the maintaining of a very steady tempo throughout, there is something of a tradition of performing this work with a slightly slower tempo at the beginning and gradually getting faster towards the end.  This practice can be traced back to a very young Arturo Toscanini who often performed the work in this fashion, somewhat to the initial shock of Ravel who admittedly was eventually won over to the approach.