Duo: The Wanamaker Organ & Flugelhorn, also Organ Four Hands

Peter Richard Conte, Grand Court Organist at Philadelphia's Wanamaker Organ (the world's largest fully functioning pipe organ), and Andrew Ennis, organist, flugelhornist, and trumpeter, play transcriptions and arrangements of symphonic and operatic music with the Wanamaker Organ.

Giacomo Puccini: Quando m’en vo from La Boheme, arr. Andrew Ennis, flugelhorn & organ

Richard Strauss: September from Four Last Songs, adapted Peter Richard Conte, flugelhorn & organ

Franz Lehar: Vilja Lied from The Merry Widow, arr. Andrew Ennis, flugelhorn & organ

Georg Frederic Handel: Lascia ch’io pianga from Rinaldo, arr. Andrew Ennis & Peter Richard Conte, flugelhorn & organ

Léo Delibes: Flower Duet from Lakmé, arr. Andrew Ennis, flugelhorn & organ

Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61, No. 7 Nocturne, arr. Andrew Ennis, flugelhorn & organ

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35, Mvt. 1 The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship, arr. Andrew Ennis, organ 4 hands

Giacomo Puccini: O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi, arr. Peter R, Conte & A. Ennis, flugelhorn & organ

Ennio Morricone: Gabriel’s Oboe, theme music for the film, The Mission, adapted for flugelhorn & organ by Peter Richard Conte from arr. by Mark McGurty & Wilma Jensen

Pietro Mascagni: Regina Coeli from Cavalleria Rusticana, arr. Peter Richard Conte, flugelhorn & organ

Ottorino Respighi: Pines of Rome, Mvt. 2: Pines Near a Catacomb, arr. A. Ennis, off-stage trumpet & organ 4 hands

Ottorino Respighi: Pines of Rome, Mvt. 4: Pines of the Appian Way, arr. Andrew Ennis, organ 4 hands

The Instruments
Heard on this recording are the famous Wanamaker pipe organ in Philadelphia and the flugelhorn.
The flugelhorn is similar to a trumpet but has a wider bore, thus produces a more mellow and dark tone when compared to the trumpet or cornet. Its tone is sometimes described as halfway between a trumpet and a French horn. Its most similar predecessor is the soprano variant of the saxhorn devel­oped in the late 1830s by Adolphe Sax (1814-­1894), patented by him in 1845, and produced ten in variants. Sax, creator of the saxophone, was the son of the Belgian instrument-making family. The saxhorn derived from an earlier 19th-century German evolution of the valveless English bugle, to which valves were added.

The Wanamaker Organ came to Philadelphia in 1909 and had been erected and playing by 1911 in the Wanamaker Department Store located in the building where the organ still exists. The organ was built in 1904 by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company and installed at the St. Louis World’s Fair before its intended destination, the Convention Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, but it never arrived in Kansas City. Having been  promoted as the world’s largest pipe organ, with more than 10,000 pipes, it was enthusiastically received at the Fair, with well-known concert organists of the day playing it for the crowds. In his first American concert tour, celebrated French organist Alexandre Guilmant played forty concerts on it in a six-week period. The organ was heard at the Fair from its opening on April 30, 1904, and its closing on December 1.

After the St. Louis World’s Fair, developers of the Kansas City Convention Hall shun­ned the organ, perhaps in response to the financial debacle befalling organbuilder Murray Harris, who originally held the contract for the Convention Hall organ but whose company reorganized as the Los Angeles Art Organ Company. The organ was stored in St. Louis after the Fair, its future unknown. In 1909, John Wanamaker acquired the organ after longer than four years of storage. Its installation in the Philadelphia store was complete two years later.

How could it be that the world’s largest organ (or nearly so) be deemed inadequate for the musical needs of a department store? Indeed, what are the musical needs of a department store? John Wanamaker and his son, Rodman, eventually made those decisions with great success for the store’s reputation and for the organ.

Though pleasing, the organ’s 1911 tonal results were deemed inadequate to fill the huge Grand Court of the store. Thus, the Wana­makers established their own organbuilding workshop in the building, employing up to 40 full-time organbuiders to enlarge the organ. More than 8,000 pipes were added by 1917, and another 10,000 pipes by 1930, bringing the total to 28,750 pipes. The original five-manual console was replaced in 1928 with the current six-manual console which has 728 stop tablets, 168 piston buttons, and 42 controls operated by the feet (in addition to the 32-note pedal keyboard). The specification of the organ appears on pages 11-14 of booklet which accompanies the CD.

The Music
by *Robert Stubbs and †William T. Van Pelt

La Boheme (1896) is Giacomo Puccini’s (1858–­ 1924) most performed opera. It is set in Paris in the 1830s and tells the love story between Rodolfo, a poet, and Mimi, a flower embroid­er­er, who are both of modest means. Musetta is the on-again, off-again lover of Rodolfo’s friend and roommate, Marcello. Her aria, Quando m’en vo is in triple meter and is fittingly referred to by audiences as Musetta’s Waltz. In this Act 2 scene at a café, she appears on the arm of an elderly nobleman and sees Marcello. She tries to get his attention by singing, “When I go all by myself through the street, people stop and look, and everyone looks at my beauty from head to foot.” Puccini illustrates her flirtatious energy with vocal ornaments and occasional chromaticism. She concludes, “I know very well that you don’t want to speak about your agony, but you feel yourself dying.” She ascends through an arpeggio to a sustained high B-natural on the word “feel.” While the aria has been transposed for the flugelhorn tessitura on this album, the climactic finish is no less satisfying.

Richard Strauss’ (1864–1949) Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs), for soprano and orchestra were composed in 1948. They were premiered and published a year after the composer’s death, and his friend Ernst Roth gave the set its name. The text of the second movement, Septem­ber, is a poem by Hermann Hesse (1877–­ 1962). Hesse paints a picture of how nature marks the end of summer. He also makes the season into a sentient being, who watches the rain fall on the flowers in the garden, yearns for peace, and falls asleep. This piece is especially lyrical and displays Strauss’ esteemed ability to compel the listener with harmonic shifts. The uncertainty of a tonal center illustrates the transition to autumn. The movement ends with a melodic passage featuring the French Horn, one of many timbres the Wanamaker Organ produces with distinct beauty.*

Franz Lehar’s (1870–1948) operetta Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), premiered in 1905. The title character is Hanna Glawari, who has inherited a fortune from her late husband. She attends a ball at the Paris embassy of her homeland, Pontevedro, which is bankrupt. The ambassador wants her to marry the aristocratic embassy secretary, Danilo, so that her money will stay in Pontevedro, although several opportunistic Parisian men are immediately drawn to her. We eventually learn that Hanna and Danilo were in love before she married her late husband. In Act 2, she hosts a party at her villa and sings to her guests Vilja Lied, a tale about a hunter who falls in love with a disappearing woods fairy. The structure is strophic, and the chorus echoes her on repetitions of the refrain, “Hold me and let me be your true love.” On this recording, we hear the Wanamaker Organ emulate the chorus with a registration of full strings. Hanna’s vocal line stretches the tempo in the final refrain and coda. The flugelhorn lends itself especially well to this exhilarating passage, culminating with a richly sustained tone in its upper register and a masterfully smooth crescendo and diminuendo.*

Thirty years before Messiah, George Frideric Handel’s (1685–1759) Rinaldo (1711) was both the first Italian opera composed for an English stage and an immediate success. The German-born composer arrived in England in 1710, having spent several years composing operas and oratorios while living in various Italian cities. Handel used the initial performances of Rinaldo as an opportunity to showcase his harpsichord playing, thereby attaining London recognition for his keyboard skills in addition to his composing abilities. The Rinaldo narrative is set in and around Jerusalem in 1099, during the First Crusade. The title character is a hero in the Christian army. He is mutually in love with Almirena, who is abducted by the sorceress Armida in service of her lover Argante, the Saracen King of Jerusalem. Armida reasons that taking Almirena away will distract Rinaldo, thereby preventing him from securing the Christian army’s victory in taking over Jerusalem. In Armida’s palace garden, Almirena laments her captivity. Argante is enchanted by Almirena’s beauty, vows his love for her, despite his relationship with Armida, and begs Almirena not to “afflict with unhappiness the sweet ray of [her] divine eyes.” Almirena responds with the aria Lascia ch’io pianga. The text translates, “Let me weep over my cruel fate and sigh for freedom; only for pity’s sake let sorrow break these chains that torment me.” Like many of Handel’s arias, this is in da capo form, which means the music begins with an A section, is followed by a B section, and finally returns to the A section, at which point the singer may choose to embellish the music by slightly altering or adding to the pitches and rhythms. Amid composing 42 operas and 29 oratorios, Handel frequently borrowed previous musical excerpts from himself. The music of this aria, for example, previously appeared in Handel’s opera Almira (1705) and his oratorio Il Trionfo del Tempo (1707). For longer than three hundred years, however, this heartbreaking sarabande melody has been heard primarily sung to the words of Almirena’s plea for permission to outwardly feel her sorrow. One reason for this enduring visibility might be that the succession of sighing motives gives such powerful impact to the text stress of “lascia” (let), “pianga” (weep), “sorte” (fate), and “sospiri” (sigh).*
 
Lakmé (1883) was French composer Léo Delibes’ (1836–1891) most successful opera. It is set in British India. The title character is the daughter of Nilakantha, a priest in the Brahmin caste of Hindu society, who resents the occupying British. While he leads sacred rites at the local temple, Lakmé and her servant Mallika go to the river to collect flowers and sing the Flower Duet. Together they observe, “Under the dense dome, white jasmine and roses cling together onto the flowering waterside, smiling in the morning.” They continue, “Let us glide softly,” and their voices ascend on the words, “Among the trembling waves.” Following the end of a phrase and a brief silence, the orchestra changes key as Lakmé shares, “But a strange fear suddenly grips me.” She is concerned about when her father goes into town alone. Mallika suggests they gather blue lotus blossoms, “So that the god Ganesh may protect him.” They then return to their original theme. After the duet, Lakmé meets and falls in love with Gérald, a British officer. Her vengeful father stabs Gérald, but Lakmé secretly brings him back to health. She tells him about a magical spring with water that grants eternal love to couples who drink it. While she goes to fetch the water, Gérald accepts a summons to return to his military duty. When Lakmé realizes he is leaving her, she eats a poisonous leaf, taking her own life. Gérald is devastated by this and pays tribute to Lakmé by drinking the magical water.*

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) composed his Overture to Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21, at age 17 in 1826, having previously composed 14 symphonies, chamber works, a piano quartet published at age 13, and other evidence of his prodigious genius. That genius supported piano lessons from age six and music theory study from age 10, leading to performance virtuosity on several instruments including the piano, violin, viola and organ. Sixteen years after composing the Overture, Op. 21, Mendelssohn composed his Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61, in 1842 as commissioned by the Prussian King Frederick William IV, who enjoyed plays with incidental music as mounted at his palace in Potsdam. Mendelssohn included the existing Overture and added 13 movements, some with vocal and choral parts. The Nocturne is movement number 7, scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, French horns, and strings. All of those voices exist in the Wanamaker organ, of course, here arranged by Andrew Ennis to include the flugelhorn he plays.

Mendelssohn made ten trips to England, conducting the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream during his first trip in 1829. He played organs on these trips, including a celebrated concert in 1837 at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on one of England’s few organs that included a pedal keyboard on which he could play some of J. S. Bach’s music requiring pedals. Influential English organists were impressed, leading to the incorporation of pedal keyboards on ever more organs in England by the end of the 1840s, organ works by both Bach and Mendelssohn, growing in popularity in England, requiring them. English organs very rarely had Pedal keyboards, earlier.†



Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) composed Scheherazade, Op. 35, in 1888 as an orchestral suite of four movements inspired by the middle-­Eastern folk stories known as One Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights. The tales involve a Sultan who takes a new wife each night and has her executed the following morning. His bride Sche­her­azade saves herself by spinning interconnected stories that the Sultan desires to continue. Peter Richard Conte and Andrew Ennis perform the first movement of the brilliantly colorful work, The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship.†

Puccini’s 1918 opera Gianni Schicchi is set in Florence in the year 1299. It is his only comedy. The opera opens with the death of Buoso Donati. His relatives are gathered and concerned only about the will, which they find out, to their horror, leaves everything to a monastery. Rinuccio, the young nephew Zita, one of one of Donati’s self-serving cousins, is madly in love with Lauretta, the daughter of Gianni Schicchi, a peasant. Zita denies Rinuccio permission to marry Lauretta because of her social status. Rinuccio begs for help from the clever Schicchi, who declines Rinuccio’s request and insists that his daughter will have nothing to do with Rinuccio’s dysfunctional family. At this point, Lauretta sings Puccini’s beloved aria, O mio babbino caro (O my daddy dearest). She tenderly expresses her deep love for Rinuccio and threatens to throw herself off the Ponte Vecchio bridge into the Arno River if she cannot be with him. Her plea to her father is successful and the turning point of the opera. Schicchi agrees to impersonate Donati, whose death is known only to his family, and to have a new will written. He warns the family of severe punishment for falsifying a will, ensuring their silence. Dressed as Donati, he tells the notary to leave the mule, the house, and the mills to Gianni Schicchi. He is then able to give Lauretta a suitable dowry for her marriage to Rinuccio.*

For the 1986 film, The Mission, Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) composed the theme music, Gabriel’s Oboe, gaining an Academy Award nomination for all of the music he composed for the film and receiving a Golden Globe Award for the score. The piece has been performed and published in many arrangements for various instruments, including one by Mark McGurty and organist Wilma Jensen. It is the basis for the performance recorded here. It was published in 1997 by Aardworkspublishing.com.†

In 1890, Pietro Mascagni’s (1863–1945) Cavalleria Rusti­cana (rustic chivalry) premiered in Rome, the production mounted as part of the first prize received for the best among 73 one-act operas submitted in a contest created by the music and newspaper publishing firm owned by Edoardo Sonzogno in Milan. Cavalleria arguably launched the operatic branch of verismo (realism), the Italian literary movement, which originated in the 1870s. Cavalleria opened three years before two other important premieres: Falstaff, the last work of Verdi’s 54 years of composing operas, and Manon Lescaut by Puccini, the celebrated verismo composer’s first canonic opera, although the third he had composed. Musicologist Jane Sylvester writes Cavalleria “featured neither nobles nor pompous heroes of generations prior.” The narrative of Cavalleria is set in a Sicilian village on Easter Sunday of 1880. Prior to the first scene, the young peasant Turiddu returns to the village from military service to find his fiancée, Lola, married to another man, Alfio. To make Lola jealous, he seduces the impressionable young peasant woman, Santuzza, who becomes emotionally attached. Turiddu successfully reclaims Lola’s affections, and the two begin having an affair. In the opera, villagers make their way to church for Mass, singing Regina Coeli. The Easter hymn opens with the liturgical text, “Queen of heaven, rejoice, Alleluia, the son you merited to bear has risen as he said.” Switching from Latin to Italian, the hymn continues, “Exalt, the Lord is not dead.” At this point, Santuzza knows about Turridu’s physical reunion with Lola. She joins in the singing and sings some passages in solo. Unlike the other villagers, she remains outside of the church because she feels unholy under the circumstances. She is, nonetheless, fully present in her prayer. Michele Girardi writes, “Collective pleasure is contrasted with individual tragedy and the new lover with the old, because the church that dominates the square, and the popular devotion expressed in the Easter hymn, symbolize the violated innocence of Santuzza, the more dishonored by Alfio’s accusation.”  Cavalleria’s legacy extends beyond the opera community in that many church choirs celebrate Easter by singing this iconic chorus number.*

The Swan is the 13th move­ment of The Carnival of the Animals composed in 1886 by Camille Saint-­Saëns (1835-1921) for two pianos and chamber ensemble. Despite having been performed privately several times in the year of its composition and thereafter, Saint-Saëns forbade its publication and public performance during his lifetime for fear that its lightheartedness would detract from his reputation for more serious works. However, he permitted publication in 1887 of The Swan as originally composed for cello with the accompaniment of a single piano instead of two. The entire The Carnival of the Animals includes 14 movements with specific instruments assigned to each animal. It was published in 1922 and performed to great public admiration. At the early, private performances, sometimes musicians donned masks of the heads of the animals their instruments represented.†
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*Robert Stubbs is an organist, choral director, and music educator. He holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in organ performance from Westminster Choir College and Indiana University, and pursues graduate studies in choral conducting at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. For seven years, he served as both Director of Music at All Souls Episcopal Church in Washington, DC and Organist and Associate Director of Choral Music at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. His favorite activity outside of work is attending the opera.

†William T. Van Pelt owns the Raven recording label and was the first full-time employee of the Organ Historical Society as its executive director 1982-2006, having been an active volunteer from 1976. He holds a journalism degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, where he was Director of Media Relations 1973-1982.

Peter Richard Conte is an organist whose nearly-unparalleled technical facility, brilliant ear for tonal color, and innovative programming have made him a highly sought “orchestral” organist. In 1989, he was appointed Wana­maker Grand Court Organist, the fourth person to hold that title since the organ first played in 1911. As titular organist, he has performed thousands of daily concerts on the largest fully-functioning musical instrument in the world.

Mr. Conte is also Principal Organist of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and, since 1991, Choirmaster and Organist of Saint Clement’s Church, Philadelphia, where he directs a professional choir in an extensive music program in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

Mr. Conte is highly regarded as a skillful performer and arranger of organ transcriptions. He has been featured several times on National Public Radio and on ABC television’s Good Morning America and World News Tonight. For eleven seasons, his monthly radio show, The Wanamaker Organ Hour, aired on Temple University Radio (WRTI) Wednesday evenings at 7 pm and his concert was streamed live on YesterdayUSA.com. Mr. Conte performs extensively throughout the United States and Canada under the management of Phillip Truck­en­brod Concert Artists, and has appeared as a featured artist at American Guild of Organists’ National and Regional Conventions. He performs with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philly Pops, and has appeared with numerous orchestras around the country.

Peter Richard Conte has served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Organ at Rider University’s Westminster Choir College where he taught organ improvisation. He is the 2008 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Indiana University School of Music, Bloomington. In 2013, the Philadelphia Music Alliance honored him with a bronze plaque on the Avenue of the Arts’ Walk of Fame. His numerous recordings appear on the Raven, Gothic, JAV, ProOrgano, Dorian, and DTR labels.

Andrew Ennis has quickly gained wide recognition throughout Philadelphia and the East Coast as a trumpeter, flugelhornist, organist, music educator, and church musician. He began his trumpet studies at age eight, and is a graduate of Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in instrumental music education, specializing in trumpet.

His teachers have included David Bilger (longtime principal trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Bryan Appleby-­Wine­berg (professor of trumpet at Rowan University). He is the Instrumental Music Director and Tennis Coach at Bishop Eustace Preparatory School in Pennsauken, New Jersey, and has served since 2016 as organist at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Camden, New Jersey. He first played flugelhorn in the Macy’s store in 2013 and the organ in 2016.

Mr. Ennis appears in Duo performances as both flugelhornist and duo organist with Peter Richard Conte throughout the country, including the Wanamaker Organ. Other Duo performances have been performed in Shreveport, Louisiana; Hanover, Pennsylvania; Boston; Chicago; Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; Woolsey Hall at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and the Spreckles Pavilion in San Diego.

The Duo of Conte and Ennis released their first CD, My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice, on the Gothic label, the first-­ever commercial album exclusively devoted to music for flugelhorn and organ. That album was recognized with a Critics’ Choice award from the American Record Guide. As a duo organist, Mr. Ennis also arranges and performs with Peter Conte large-­scale transcriptions of symphonic works such as Respighi’s Pines of Rome, Rimsky-­Kor­sakov’s Scheherazade (both featured on this Raven album), and Stravinsky’s Round Dance of the Princesses from The Firebird.