Simon Preston Handel Die Orgelkonzerte

This disc brings together recordings made in the 1980's as part of a reduction of three original discs down to two. At the same time, the original fine recordings have been remastered to good effect with added depth and space. This makes a particularly important improvement to the Coronation Anthems which previously came over as sonically lacking ideal breadth, depth and recorded weight in Zadok. The ears adjusted after that.

The composition is a tour de force, written by Handel at the age of 22 to showcase his skill in choral music – which this recording certainly does. Outstanding historically informed performance led by Simon Preston. Of particular note: an inspired rendering of the soprano duet "De Torrente" by Diana Montague and the legendary Arleen Augér.

Simon Preston's recordings of the complete set of Handel's organ concertos with Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert was the first to use the latest musicological research by Anthony Hicks. These recordings remain unsurpassed from a scholarly point of view, and the performances themselves remained a benchmark for at least a decade. They may not be the best versions available now but still have a lot to offer. Preston's performances are alert and still sound very vibrant and strong, yet it must be confessed that the rather harsh sound of Preston's instrument in Opus 7 verges on becoming joyless at times.

English organ music before the mid-nineteenth century tended to commune with itself and must indeed often have given satisfaction to a mere audience of one, the player. The widely-acclaimed exceptions are the eighteenth-century concertos with orchestra, with Handel as the presiding genius, and the often exciting voluntaries of John Stanley, whose popularity with congregations must have been bad news for a tired verger wanting his supper. But these well-planted forms wilted and dropped when handled by lesser masters. It took a special sympathy to be able to exploit the capabilities of England's modest little organs.

One of Brahms' earliest musical jobs (besides playing piano in whorehouses) was directing a choral society. This introduced him to the music of the Renaissance and the Baroque, which sparked his antiquarian enthusiasms, in particular his first-hand encounters with the choral music of Bach. Choral music became an important part of Brahms' output – to his art, to his career (Ein deutsches Requiem propelled him to European notice), and to his income. Brahms may have directed much of his choral music to the then-lucrative amateur market, but he also produced plenty for crack choirs and without much reasonable hope for financial reward – again, Ein deutsches Requiem a good example. Like the Requiem, some of these works even became popular.

Much of Bach’s organ music was written during the earlier part of his career, culminating in the period he spent as court organist at Weimar. Among many well-known compositions we may single out the Dorian Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 538, the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue, BWV 564, Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542, Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582, Prelude and Fugue “St Anne”, BWV 552 (in which the fugue theme resembles the well-known English hymn of that name), Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, and the Toccata and Fugue in F, BWV 540. Chorale preludes are compositions for organ that consist of short variations on simple hymn tunes for all seasons of the church year.

Over the course of the last 12 years Simon Preston has been recording Bach’s organ music for DG, and while some of these discs have been released individually during that time, many are appearing here for the first time. More than that, some of the earlier recordings have been rejected in favour of more recent ones: I’m glad that his 1992 recording of the ‘Schubler’ Chorales (6/92) has been substituted by an altogether more relaxed and elegant version, recorded in late 1999, in which he not only seems more in sympathy with the music but also feels less inclined to treat it as the latest Olympic athletics event; BWV645 takes the best part of a minute longer in this new recording and benefits enormously from it. A total of 10 organs has been used (every one, as they say, a winner) and the booklet includes adequate historic information, specifications and photographs (although none of Preston’s registrations is detailed), as well as brief, rather basic notes and a somewhat superficial interview with Preston himself.

Johann Sebastian Bach - Simon Preston - Works For Organ
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 323 MB | Part. Artwork: 23 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon "entrée" # 471 734-2 GEN | Country/Year: Germany 2000s, 1989
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Organ

"…Preston's playing is lucid, alert, and incisive, and his choices of stops produce clear tones that make the counterpoint utterly transparent. If one listens to several discs in a row, Preston's consistently bright sonorities and mostly brisk tempos may seem a little predictable, but any perceived lack of variety is certainly compensated by his skill and thorough mastery of this massive body of work. These recordings present the organs in nearly ideal conditions, with superb sound quality in moderately resonant spaces and without the usual blemishes associated with church recordings, such as the noises of the instruments' mechanisms or random background distractions…" ~AMG