In France and most of all in Italy, organ music gets out of the classical stilistic features, rising the Opera, thank most of all to innovations brought first by Fratelli Serassi of Bergamo and then by Fratelli Lingiradi of Pavia with Organo Orchestra equipe with wind-chest like these used by Cavaillé Coll.
Besides the Nineteenth century Italian organ enriches itself with adjunts loaned by theatre’s orchestra that contribute rendering in a more realistic way the theatrical effect: the most common are the Glockenspiel, the Turk Band or Albanian (Serassi) to which be added to the triangle, typical of Famiglia Bruna’s instruments.
In this way, while abroad persists the distinction between sacred and profane, in Italy churches become a sort of poor’s theatre: in fact poor people have the opportunity to revive memorable events of great theatres – first of all Regio and La Scala – through the listening of original compositions or transcriptions prepared by the organist, who is a pianist loaned to organ.
Accomplice of this long process that seen its definitive extinction in Riforma Ceciliana (1890), it’s the pre-conciliar liturgy to which the believers participated in, saying one’s rosary and listening to background music.
In this context begin numerous liturgical pieces performing in alternatim with the choir (Versetti per il Kyrie e/o Gloria) and like soloist in Sinfonie, Suonate per Offertorio, per l’Elevazione, per la Consumazione, Polke e Marce “per dopo la Messa”, all composed in opera style, also with frequent references to band stilistic feature.
Even thug it treats like music of simple and immediate enjoyment, they require however to the organ player a marked fantasy with a technical task: close to a thorough piano pieces that, when requested, must be adapted to phonic and mechanic characteristics of various instruments.
Don’t forget that the size and the number of manuals change from instrument to instrument, as the distribution of the registers and the availability of the orchestral effects.
There are sections characterized by a thorough arie which melodies are committed to registers of concert. This had carried to a dramatization in which soloists and orchestra revive in our symphonic organ.
Although the majority of musical events happens during the celebrations: concerts, also of great importance, saw the most famous organ players as protagonists of interpretation and improvisation.
Here so the succession at consolle of figures like Padre Davide da Bergamo or the Piedmontese Felice Frasi whom are considered, with writers of treatises like Giuseppe Arrigo and Gian Piero Calvi, founders of the real first organ school in the Nineteenth century.
Centre of the most important activities and musical productions of the time are the two actual regions of Piedmont and Lombardy: places where Serassi Family became the most important leader of organ building and this is the reason of the choice of a Serassi instrument with a repertoire of contemporary authors whom worked in these regions.
Exactly in function of the context in which was born the idea of realizing this CD and of the location of the Serassi, the majority of the authors represented - except Oldrini, Corsi and Padre Davide – belongs to the area of Turin.
The result is a revival of a typical nineteenth century concert with a multicoloured compositions in an alternation able to underline the sound palette of the small but versatile instrument, preserved unbroken till nowadays.