• Pietro Alessandro Yon (1886-1943) was born at the foot of the Alps in Italy. His musical talent was soon discovered and he went to study in Turin and later in Rome with Sgambati (piano) and Renzi (organ). His fame as a brilliant organist soon spread internationally and he was offered a post as organist in Manhattan, New York, where he settled for life in 1907. Pietro met with enormous success as a concert performer, holding his first concert at the Aeolian Hall in New York in 1914. During the course of almost thirty years of feverish activity, he gave around 1500 performances, 23 of them in the famous Carnegie Hall. By 1926 he acquired the post of Organist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the foremost seat of Catholicism in the USA. He invited the soloists of the Metropolitan Opera to perform during services. He made friends with Caruso and Toscanini, who performed his orchestral and choral works. • Yon’s extraordinary organ works are clearly inspired by the enormous possibilities of the newly built organs in the USA. This second volume of his complete organ works presents the famous Concerto Gregoriano, originally written for organ and orchestra. Dedicated to Marco Enrico Bossi, the piece was written for the inauguration of the famous Wanamaker organ at Macy’s in Philadelphia, with Leopold Stokowski on the podium.
• The first CD of the edition, released in January 2021 furthermore presents other works on “religious” themes, including the two compositions for the Easter period, while the present second CD features all the pieces related to Christmas. These works are not exactly “religious”, but rather “popular” in the way they express the themes and mood of the nativity. The CD ends with Gesù Bambino, a composition made famous for modern audiences by Luciano Pavarotti.
• Played on the magnificent Brondino Vegezzi-Bossi organ at St. Paul protestant church in Gland, Switzerland. Tommaso Mazzoletti again delivers outstanding and brilliant performances of these fascinating organ works by Pietro Yon. The first volume of his organ works received some excellent reviews in the international press: “Mazzoletti is a master of registration and owns a wonderful feeling for tempo and color” (Burkhard Schäfer in “Organ”).
