ZSIGMOND SZATHMÁRY, Feuertaufe. Organova, Vol. 8 (General Editor, Zsigmond Szathmáry), Bärenreiter 7659. This work was written for the San Sebastian International Organ Festival, Spain, and could be translated as "Baptism By Fire." It is a marvel of expressionism, tone-color, and idiomatic organ writing, in which the organ speaks in a musical language that is completely contemporaneous and unfettered by traditionalist associations. The rigorous atonality here demands a concomitant "anti-formalism," and though only a few stirring gestures serve to bind the piece together, they do so with an intensity that is all-the-more magnified, and in which, remarkably, all the various figures, chords, and clusters are purposeful and resonant. Within the general fast-slow-fast outline, an emotionally-charged climax emerges from out of a series of repeated notes in the pedal, leading to a characteristic pedal passage marked "furioso, molto deciso," which, in piano, also serves to conclude the piece. Unfortunately, the score is laid out with separate sets of staves for each division throughout (seven staves altogether), whose drastic size-reduction makes for difficult reading.