Emanuele Cardi Tunder: Complete Organ Music (2016)

Built by Arp Schnitger and his sons in 1721, the organ featured in this recording resides in the St. Michael Church in Sqolle, the Netherlands. Over the last few decades the organ has been restored to its full glory. The pieces chosen for this release come from the Husumer Orgelbuch (Husum Organ Book). This book is a collection of works for organ by North German masters. A notable Italian organist, scholar, and teacher, Manuel Tomadin won the Grand Prix of the Schnitger Organ Competition in 2011. He wrote all of the liner notes included in this releases booklet, which includes extensive information on the organ.

The complete organ works by Walther! Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748, a near contemporary of Bach) spent the major part of his life as the organist of the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Weimar, where he also was teacher of the Duke of Weimar. He formed a close friendship with Johann Sebastian Bach, of whom he was a second cousin. Walthers organ music may be divided into a large corpus of Chorale settings, in which he followed the tradition of Bach, and the transcriptions of fashionable concertos by composers like Telemann, Albinoni, Torelli, Vivaldi, Gentili and many others.

If the keyboard music of Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726) is now played or remembered, it is through the gentle swing of his C major Pastorale with its chirpy central section, popular as communion music with organists. Few of them will know that the Pastorale forms part of a larger collection of Sonata dintavolatura, which were published as Book 1, with a second book which worked in the same genre but for harpsichord.

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710‐1784) was the first son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. He was taught by his father and soon he became proficient on several instruments. Although he was an organist for 20 years in Halle, he was one of the first musicians who strived for an independent life, trying to earn his living as a composer, performer and teacher. He struggled all his life, not helped by his difficult character, and he died in poverty in Berlin, totally forgotten.

Listeners to his Requiem will recognise Duruflé's conservative and intensely personal musical language as heard in his organ music. The influence of Debussy, Dukas, Ravel, Tournemire and Vierne is evident, and like these composers Duruflé provides detailed performance indications.

Johann Gottfried Müthel was the last pupil of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. He was present at the master’s deathbed, and he performed the funeral services, taking over the duties of the deceased Cantor. Mühtel’s music (“full of novelty, taste and grace” according to the great art historian and traveller Charles Burney) is of a wide variety: his Organ Fantasias are imposing, monumental and substantial, his chorale preludes offer intimate meditations on the chorale texts, all of it written in a highly original, dynamic musical language full of contrasts and instrumental virtuosity.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs interest in the organ would seem to be fairly limited, at least judging by the number of pieces he composed for the instrument. The reasons for this attitude could be personal and professional, but could also reflect the changing affections and the new sensibility of the period, since during his lifetime the organ underwent a phase of relative decline. Indeed, following the acme reached by Johann Sebastian Bach, the instrument sank into a phase of neglect in Germany during the second half of the 1700s.