Petr Eben, Organ Works

Petr Eben (1929-2007) is a major composer of contemporary organ music whose compositions enjoy great international renown. The interpretation recorded on this CD series was largely influenced by the composer's personal suggestions and comments. The series compiles all of Eben's works for solo organ which have been published to this date, played by Gunther Rost on various contemporary instruments.

The speaker in both cycles, Job (vol. I) and The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart (vol. V, which will be published in 2006), is the late Gert Westphal, one of Germany's most important contemporary reciters.

Petr Eben (1929-2007)

Composer Petr Eben was born in Žamberk in the Czech Republic in 1929. He studied Piano and Composition at the Charles University in Prague where he successively became a lector at the Department of Musicology and later, a Professor of Composition. Today, Petr Eben is regarded as one of our time's leading composers.

His oeuvre comprises a multitude of musical genres, such as opera, oratorio, concerto, choir and chamber music. The fields of organ and church music figure pre-eminently in his work, which is due to both his personal liking of the organ as an instrument and his deeply rooted religious convictions. Petr Eben received numerous international awards for his compositions. He was made, amongst other things, a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres", an Honorary Professor at Manchester's Royal College of Music, and he received the Stamitz Prize of the German Artists' Guild.

Furthermore, Eben gave concerts in the great concert halls and churches of the world's most important musical centres and gained an international reputation as an improviser on the piano and on the organ.

Gert Westphal (1920-2002)

Actor and stage director Gert Westphal was born in Dresden and is regarded as Germany's most important contemporary reciter. Working for the Deutsche Grammophon and other labels, he recorded more than 100 titles, amongst which are the unabridged versions of the great novels by Goethe, Theodor Fontane, Thomas Mann, Oscar Wilde, and Gustave Flaubert.

For twenty years, he was a member of the then highly renowned Zurich Schauspielhaus. It was during this time that he had guest performances at the theatres of Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, and all of Europe's German language radio stations. He directed operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Henze and Reimann in the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, the State Theatre in Brunswick, in Mannheim, in the Hessian State Theatre in Darmstadt, in Berlin, and in Nuremberg.

Gert Westphal was a member of Hamburg's Free Academy of Arts and received numerous awards, like the Literature Prize of the City of Zurich in 1975, which was the first time that it was awarded to an actor, the Federal Republic of Germany's Cross of Merit, 1st class, in 1982, and, in 1988, the German Record Prize, which was then for the first time awarded for a non-musical production. In 1995, the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft awarded him with the Golden Grammophone, praising him as a "great shaper of great literature". In 2001, he was allowed to sign his name into the Golden Book of the Hanseatic City of Bremen, and the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg awarded him with the Senator-Biermann-Ratjen Medal in recognition of his cultural merits.