Organ Bach Sielbermann

Thoroughly trained by his father Johann Sebastian, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach became renowned as a virtuoso harpsichordist and organist. His surviving organ music includes the seven choral preludes and ten fugues on this disc, which range from relatively simple settings to elaborate displays of counterpoint. Born in Rio de Janeiro and based in the USA, Julia Brown, who has made several acclaimed recordings of keyboard music by Buxtehude and Scheidemann for Naxos, has been praised as ‘a first-class artist and superb technician … an exceptionally sensitive stylist’.

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.

The Japanese organist, Minako Tsukatani, started playing the organ while studying at the University of Fine Arts and Music of Tokyo, musicology department. She studied pipe organ under Naoko Imai, Makiko Hayashima, Jacques van Oortmerssen and the late Jean Boyer, and improvisation under Jos van der Kooy. After graduating from the University of Fine Arts and Music of Tokyo in 1995, Tsukatani continued her studies at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, majoring in historical organ and organ construction theory.

The father of the Baroque period, Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the greatest composers of all time. His works, covering a wide range of instruments and voice types, continue to flourish to this day, forming a core part of musical learning. This special disc brings together the Trio Sonatas BWV525–530, works that originally appeared in a manuscript of works for organ. In this form, the pieces naturally became part of Bach’s teaching – a notable contribution to his oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann’s virtuoso organ technique.

The recordings released in this series are devoted to the music of Bach, never a specialty among Russians, and they have the feeling of something extreme, developed in isolation. Feinberg plays Bach, perhaps, as Liszt might have heard Bach and played him – with maximum use of the pedals, a full range of dynamics, and an approach that in every way transforms Bach into an arch-Romantic. This disc, in the label's Feinberg series, is perhaps the most extreme of all, for here the artist tackles not only piano works but those for organ – the listener is treated not only to Feinberg's interpretations but also to his transcriptions. Sample the booming bass lines of the group of chorale preludes in the middle of the program. Of course, the line between transcription and interpretation in this case is not terribly clear. Taken as a whole, the Chromatic fantasia and fugue, BWV 903, leaves the impression that the music has been pushed nearly as far as in Busoni's Bach transcriptions; it's not Bach, really, but it's quite a thrill.

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.

Some impressive pianism may be found here, both from Piers Lane and prior to that from Eugen d’Albert. The latter was a virtuoso pianist and transcriber, also a composer whose opera Tiefland (1903) has remained popular in Germany. He was, however, born in Glasgow of French and English parents and began his career in England. Eventually he publicly renounced all things Anglo-Saxon, much to the annoyance of his mentor, Sir Arthur Sullivan, and settled in Berlin to concertize, performing the great masters: Bach, interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven.

The Prelude and Fugue in E Minor forms a frame, as it did in Bach’s time, around this program, designed to fit the liturgical format that gave Bach’s music its purpose; the Fantasia precedes the motet on which it is based and follows Cantata BWV 64, which quotes the fifth stanza of Johann Franck’s poem “Jesu, meine Freude.” The recording was made in the Arnstadt church where Bach served from 1703 to 1707 (the 1699 organ has recently been restored), but the two cantatas and the motet date from his first year in Leipzig. This impressive presentation, the first in a series called Bach in Context, is a hardbound book of 84 pages. The notes favor Joshua Rifkin’s understanding of one voice to a part in Bach’s vocal/choral music, the use of a harpsichord as well as the church organ (not the more versatile chest organ), and the liturgical context in which the music was originally sung.

During his years at Weimar Bach made a number of keyboard arrangements of concertos and instrumental movements by other composers. His arrangements of concertos by Vivaldi, six of them for harpsichord and three for organ, remind us of the strong influence Vivaldi exercised over Bach's Instrumental compositions. The sixteen arrangements for harpsichord include a keyboard version of an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, a violin concerto by Telemann and three concertos by Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. The six concertos transcribed for organ also include arrangements of two concertos by Duke Johann Ernst. The latter was a nephew of Bach's employer and a pupil for keyboard and for composition of Johann Gottfried Walther, organist of the Weimar Stadtkirche. His principal instrument was the violin and Telemann wrote for him a set of six sonatas for violin and clavier. Johann Ernst died in 1715 at the age of nineteen, leaving nineteen instrumental works. Of these six concertos were published posthumously by Telemann in 1718.