The title of Navona's attractive and eclectic album Heavy Pedal might be referring to the pedal solo, the "Perpetuum Mobile" from German composer Wilhelm Middelschulte's Konzert für Orgel uber ein Thema von Joh. Seb. Bach, but the performance by Brink Bush is anything but heavy; his fleet agility in the showstopper is dazzling and leaves the listener wondering how such playing is physically possible with the feet alone. That piece (1903) and Middelschulte's post-Romantic Passacaglia (1897) are the only works that don't have ...
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The title of Navona's attractive and eclectic album Heavy Pedal might be referring to the pedal solo, the "Perpetuum Mobile" from German composer Wilhelm Middelschulte's Konzert für Orgel uber ein Thema von Joh. Seb. Bach, but the performance by Brink Bush is anything but heavy; his fleet agility in the showstopper is dazzling and leaves the listener wondering how such playing is physically possible with the feet alone. That piece (1903) and Middelschulte's post-Romantic Passacaglia (1897) are the only works that don't have a distinctly contemporary sound, and most of them could probably be characterized as post-modernist. The most musically sophisticated and substantial work on the album is American composer Curt Cacioppo's "di cibo celeste" (ciaconna-fantasia on themes from Mozart's Don Giovanni), which has an especially lively inventiveness. British composer Michael Summers' four-movement Variations on an English Folksong is a similarly intriguing work, manipulating its source material in striking...
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