Polibio Fumagalli: Organ Music – Marco Ruggeri

   in Choir & Organ (Jul, 2017)
Brilliant Classics sheds light on yet another forgotten figure of the 19th-century Italian organ world. Polibio Fumagalli is of particular interest as the organ teacher of Marco Enrico Bossi at the Milan Conservatory and, following an encounter with Saint-Saëns, as one of the first to move the Italian organ beyond the final iterations of its classical form (divided stops, short pedalboard). Thus, the first of these two CDs presents Fumagalli’s Ascetica musicale, a series of short pieces filled with the typical operatic clichés one associates with the later versions of the Serassi organ type (although generally less vulgar than many other examples). The second CD features Fumagalli’s later music, written for …