BBC Music Magazine

Christmas and organ music go together like… well, probably not like Michael Finnissy, one of the leading figures of the New Complexity movement. But as an antidote to musical tinsel, this new double album devoted to a wonderfully uncompromising composer is very welcome. Much of his huge output features titles that themselves can sound complicated, yet the existence of his four baldly titled organ symphonies is a reminder that Finnissy has often written in some sort of response to tradition. There’s a neo-classical rigour to the Organ Symphony No. 1, underlined by the registrations Forrest Eimold (himself also a composer) finds on the organ of Blackburn Cathedral (the organs of the Memorial Church of Harvard University feature too). The cataclysmic climax of this work is marked ff!, and one can hear the exclamation mark.

The Organ Symphony No.2 owes more to the French Romantic tradition (evoked here in colours of thrilling bite) and is one of the highlights of the record, but every time Finnissy appears to be leaning towards tradition, as in his 7 Hymn-Tune Preludes, he veers off somewhere else rewardingly. Completed in 2022, these are not chorale preludes in any conventional sense and conjure up only faint allusions to the tunes behind them. Eimold’s project gives us the long view of a composer who turns 80 in 2026: …ere the set of the sun… is based on music written for a production of Macbeth during his schooldays and Xunthaeresis employs aleatoric devices that were in fashion when Finnissy was a student.

—John Allison