Max Reger
Max Reger's organ music packs Bach's counterpoint into dense late-Romantic harmony: chorale preludes, toccatas and the Benedictus that still stills a nave. His chamber miniatures carry the same concentrated craft into violin and piano.
He wrote almost everything except opera and the full symphony, returning again and again to fugue and variation. The Op. 59 organ pieces swing from thunder to hush within a few bars; the Three Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 79d, move from Wiegenlied to Capriccio and Burla with Brahmsian warmth and sudden wit. Absolute music was his creed. Beethoven and Brahms supplied the forms, Wagner the stretch of harmony, Bach the polyphony. What results is reflective chamber writing and liturgical organ scores built for listening, not display: short works that leave a long aftertaste.
Compositions by Max Reger appear on
Souvenir
An engaging collection of violin and piano works, several drawn from the Australian Music Examinations Board violin syllabus, spanning salon pieces, spirituals and early Mozart.