Poul Ruders

The organ part and reduced score Symphony No. 4 - An Organ Symphony (2008) by Poul Ruders. Full score: WH31186 Orch. parts are available on hire: hire@ewh.dk Preface / Programme Note When introducing a large-scale symphonic work not only as a symphony but as an organ symphony it would be impossible not to think of and perhaps compare it with Camille Saint-Saëns’s famous SYMPHONY NO. 3 popularly known as the Organ Symphony. Well that is a risk I am prepared to take – and live with the consequences.Saint-Saëns however listed his work as a symphony avec/withorgan. The organ only appears in two out of the four sections of thepiece. In my symphony the instrument plays a far more significant part and is featured in all four movements. But it is not a concerto for organ and orchestra rather a symphony with organo obligato - a symphony with an organ part of a soloistic nature. So an Organ Symphony it is. The first movement PRELUDE is exactly that: a foreplay to what is in store for the rest of the symphony. It is slow (very slow!) and predominantly hushed: the organ and the orchestra wake up side-by-side getting to know one another.The second movement CORTÈGE is a slowly moving processional and it evokes extreme solemnity and austerity. Later on the music takes flight and the atmosphere lightens considerably a far more playful music emerging.This leads to the third movement ETUDE an exercise in instrumental virtuosity and technical challenge.The fourth and last movement is called CHACONNE but I could just as well have named it passacaglia (the definition of those two terms seems to blur even among the learned). Bearing in mind the last movement of Johannes Brahms´s SYMPHONY NO.4 which is universally agreed on as being a passacaglia I chose to avoid the Wrath of the Gods and opted for