FRANCIS POTT (b.1957)

Christus - Passion Symphony for solo organ

Jeremy Filsell (organ)

"The five movements of Christus trace respectively the Coming of Christ; Gethsemane; the Via Crucis/Golgotha/the Deposition; the Tomb; and,

finally, Resurrection, portrayed not as a prolonged psalm of victory already achieved, but as a vast struggle towards ultimate triumph."

- Francis Pott

Born in 1957, Francis Pott was a chorister at New College, Oxford and a Music Scholar at Winchester and Magdalene College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Hugh Wood while pursuing piano studies as a private pupil of Hamish Milne in London. He remains active as a solo recitalist and accompanist and maintains an occasional piano duo partnership with Jeremy Filsell. He has appeared at the Wigmore hall and been heard on BBC Radio 3 playing his own works.

"This extraordinary work is a virtuosic masterpiece and one that many-an-organist might be fearful of performing, let alone recording, 'live'. Jeremy Filsell's masterly musicianship and skills here produce a stunning live account of this important work. Not a work beholden to any other: rather, an astonishingly original composition, compelling in its structural logic and exhilarating in performance. All in all, a stupendous achievement." The Times

"Arrestingly original ...the large-scale cohesion fulfils its designation as 'Symphony' with monumental conviction." Musical Times

"A tour de force." The Spectator

Signum 2cds SIGCD062