Credits:

Jean-Charles Ablitzer

Description:

The extraordinary organist Abrizel's 2000 session in Spain, a phantom recording that had been in storage for 17 years, is finally available! Pablo Bruna was an organist and composer born in Daroca, a town near Zaragoza, Spain, who contracted smallpox and went blind at the age of 5. He received a musical education and was effectively appointed organist at the Church of Our Lady of Daroca at the age of 16 (officially in 1631). Soon he was known as "the blind man of Daroca," and his fame was such that King Felipe IV and King Carlos II of Spain stopped by Daroca on their travels to listen to him play. 1639 he was offered the position of organist at the prestigious Church of Our Lady of Pilar in Zaragoza, but he declined. 1669 he became director of music at the Church of Our Lady of Daroca. In 1669 he was appointed music director of the church of Our Lady of Pilar, a position he held for eight years until 1667, despite his blindness, when he died.The recording, made in May 2000 in Cariñena, a town about 30 km northeast of Daroca, was put in storage due to the bankruptcy of Harmonic Records, but in 2016, we met with the revived owners of Harmonic, Mr. Juice and Mr. Abrisel, and approached them about releasing it, and finally in September 2017, the editing was done, Finally, in September 2017, the editing was done and the album was released not on CD-R but on a CD disc pressed by SONY/DADC of Austria. Jean-Charles Abrisel was born in 1946 in Grand Villars, France, and after self-taught on the organ, studied at the Strasbourg Conservatory with Pierre Vidal; in 1971 he was appointed organist of Belfort Cathedral, a position he still holds as of 2017, and from 1971 to 2007 was He was also a professor at the Belfort Conservatory. Abrisel, who has a deep knowledge of historical organs, is also involved in organ restoration, and his knowledge of each instrument and his performance, which makes full use of the sound plugs, is recognized as exceptional among organists of the old music tradition. It should also be noted that he has supported Gérard Reine as organist of Il Seminario Musicale.Abrisel, who like Enrico Gatti on the baroque violin can produce "music that is not too much or too little, but is full of exceptional charm," is truly a "special organist. After the bankruptcy of Harmonic Records, which had released many of his masterpieces from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Abrisel was unable to find a label that would record his organ solos on a consistent basis, and many of the new recordings that were released sporadically were difficult to obtain outside of France. In 2016, Harmonic Records resumed distribution, much to the delight of fans.