Hyperion Records

These are moderately difficult preludes to Bohemian Brotherhood hymns that can be used as concert pieces or in church services. They were originally commissioned by the Bärenreiter Verlag, a German classical music publisher, who was responsible for the choice of preludes. The publisher’ s requirements were difficult to meet since they wanted compositions suitable for use in church services, which could be played by organists without formal training and at the same time could be used as stand-alone concert pieces. For this reason a score was written on two staves instead of the three that are commonly used in organ music. I wanted to communicate the different individual characters of the hymns. The arrangements do not follow the traditional hymn prelude model, but assume different forms (e.g. passacaglia, ostinati etc.)

from notes by Petr Eben © 2002
English: Julia Rushworth and Atlas Translations