Reincken

In this extensive 50-disc set, Brilliant Classics presents 500 years of organ music. The pieces presented here offer a survey of diversity, value, and historical importance. The first portion of the set is devoted to pieces from the early period. Groundbreaking organ composers such as Cavazzoni and De Macque, who developed the capriccio and canzon forms and composed complex counterparts to the periods vocal music, are featured here. The Baroque and Classical eras are represented in this set by the likes of powerhouse composers Mozart, J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, Handel, Telemann, and Haydn.

With CPO's volume 15, their comprehensive project featuring organ works of the Northern German Baroque is now complete. On the laste release, Friedhelm Flamme dedicates himself to the complete free organ works, that is, to the complete fugues and preludes, of Heinrich Scheidemann, a composer regarded as one of the co-founders of the Northern German organ school. Some of Scheidemann's chorale settings are also presented. Johann Adam Reincken succeeded Scheidemann as the organist at St. Catherine's Church in Hamburg after his mentor's death and is regarded as his most important pupil.

To celebrate Ricercar’s fortieth anniversary, with the symbolic total running time of forty hours of music, this box set assembles a vast anthology of seventeenth-century German music, an area that clearly emerges here as the label’s main focus. The anthology ends with a selection of the very first compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, in which the link with the music of previous generations is still very perceptible. Some of the finest artists and ensembles ever featured on the label are included here, such as Andrea Buccarella, Brice Sailly, Yoanna Moulin, Capella Sancti Michaelis, Ex Tempore, Musica Aurea, and many more.