Organ

The late-Renaissance keyboard music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck is virtuosic to a high degree, reflecting both his exceptional skills as an improviser and the secular role organ music was assigned in Reformed Amsterdam. Without a liturgical function to constrain his imagination or shape his music – Calvinist services had no place for it – Sweelinck was free to provide fanciful showpieces for his daily recitals in the Oude Kerk. Examples of his improvisational style can be found in the quasi-fugal Hexachord Fantasia, the witty Echo Fantasia, and the flamboyant Toccatas, of which three are included here. Yet Sweelinck's music is also rigorously logical and full of ingenious contrapuntal devices. These are readily found in his fantasias, but are prominently featured in his numerous sets of variations. His elaborate settings of the chorales Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr and Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, and his variations on popular melodies, such as the famous Mein junges Leben hat ein End, display his invention and thorough manipulation of his subjects in all registers. Perhaps better known as a harpsichordist, Robert Woolley is also a fine organist. Woolley has selected representative works from each of Sweelinck's favored genres and given them exceptional performances on the Van Hagerbeer organ of the Pieterskerk, Leiden.

This release contains the complete works for organ by François Couperin, composer to the court of Louis XIV. James Johnstone continues his series of recordings on the great baroque organs of Europe on the 1699 organ by Julien Tribuot, Louis XIV’s organ builder, now in the Eglise St Martin in Seurre, Burgundy. This last surviving instrument by a revered builder is close to its original condition. A leading baroque organist, James Johnstone recorded these works as part of 350th anniversary celebrations of Couperin's birth in 2018, and completes Metronome’s survey of Couperin’s complete keyboard works.

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.

Recorded for Calliope between 1975 and 1991, André Isoir’s version of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach was an exceptional undertaking that received unanimous acclaim from press and public alike. La Dolce Volta here reissues this set, unavailable since 2008, on 15 CDs at a highly attractive price. These interpretations which have achieved legendary status for their magical touch and ornamentation, their supremely elegant and inward sculpting of phrases, are now enhanced by stylish new presentation (remastered sound, luxury packaging, recent interview with the artist, full details of the instruments).

Thomas Trotter is a prize-winning concert organist and one of the UK's most admired performing musicians, reflected in Her Majesty The Queen awarding him The Queen's Medal for Music on St Cecilia's Day 2020. For this recording of Duruflé's complete organ works he returns to the chapel in which his extraordinary performing career began. Trotter was the 14th organist to be awarded the position of Organ Scholar at King's College, taking up the post in 1976. Organ Scholars at King's are undergraduate students at the College with a range of roles and responsibilities, including playing for choral services in the Chapel, assisting in the traiing of the probationers and Choristers, and conducting the full choir from time to time. The position of Organ Scholar is held for the duration of the student's degree course.

Recorded for Calliope between 1975 and 1991, André Isoir’s version of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach was an exceptional undertaking that received unanimous acclaim from press and public alike. La Dolce Volta here reissues this set, unavailable since 2008, on 15 CDs at a highly attractive price. These interpretations which have achieved legendary status for their magical touch and ornamentation, their supremely elegant and inward sculpting of phrases, are now enhanced by stylish new presentation (remastered sound, luxury packaging, recent interview with the artist, full details of the instruments).

The grand Arp Schnitger organ in St. Jacobi (Church of St James) in Hamburg is remarkable in several respects. This instrument with four manuals boasts of the largest extant inventory of original pipes from thensixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Trompete 16’ in the great organ is the very oldest of its kind. Harald Vogel, the Nestor of the Northern German organ tradition and the recent recipient of the Buxtehude Prize of the Hansa City of Lübeck, presents this magnificently restored organ in conjunction with an unusual Hamburg “family reunion”.

The organ works of Axel Ruoff, born in Stuttgart in 1957, constitute one of the most important contributions to the literature for the instrument by any composer since Messiaen, with Ruoff often using its unparalleled resources to write music of extraordinary power and dramatic flair. This third volume in Jan Lehtola’s complete recording features the organ in the unusual role of duo partner in chamber music – but it is chamber music conceived on a symphonic scale. Here these five muscular duo works are separated by a series of weighty chorale preludes.