Pachelbel Estravagante

Anyone who has ever worked in any aspect of classical music retailing has been asked the question "Did Pachelbel write anything else besides the Canon?" The answer is yes, and some of it is just as pleasing to the general listener as the Canon in D major, originally for three violins and continuo. Finding recordings of these works has been the tough part, but with growing interest in German music of the late seventeenth century, more choices are beginning to appear. This release by German audiophile label MDG is somewhat geeky in looks, but anyone who's ever wanted a Pachelbel disc should check it out. Not least for the sound; MDG has devoted itself mostly to chamber music, but the results the engineers obtain from the organ at St. Peter's church in the German city of Freiberg are really startling.

Arguably Pachelbel's masterpiece, "Apollo's Lyre" is a series of six arias, each of which consists of a set of highly contrasted variations on the initial theme. As a composer, Pachelbel was perhaps most interested in the variation principal, in direct contrast to his great successor, Bach, who used the form only rarely (but then typically wrote the greatest variation work ever–the "Goldberg Variations"). The musical argument is easy to follow, and the tunes themselves simple and memorable. John Butt frames the work with two mighty chaconnes. A chaconne is basically the same thing as a passacaglia, namely a series of variations over a constantly repeating bass line. Try this disc. You're in for a pleasant surprise.

Johann Pachelbel (baptised September 1, 1653 – buried March 9, 1706) was a German Baroque composer, organist and teacher, who brought the south German organ tradition to its peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.

Pachelbel - Canon & Gigue; Bach, Handel, Vivaldi
Musica Antiqua Köln - Reinhard Goebel
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 371 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Archiv Produktion # 447 285-2 | Country/Year: Germany 1995, 1983
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

"…As it stands, this is an issue that can be warmly recommended musically and technically without reservation—except perhaps to those who hanker after rich Romantic tone and find the characteristic sound of baroque violins wiry. Even they, however, could not fail to be stirred by the enormous vitality of these performances: the word 'routine' simply doesn't seem to exist in the vocabulary of this splendid team of virtuosi. Its Vivaldi, which brings home the point that the Folies d'Espagne was (as its name implies) originally a frenzied dance, is in itself worth getting the disc for; 'the' Pachelbel canon played in the proper style might wean slush-wallowers away from the soupiness in which it is usually drenched; but the Handel trio sonata (incorporating themes from various stage works) is also a delight; and the glorious sense of controlled freedom which permeates the Bach, meticulously phrased and stylishly ornamented, uplifts the spirit." ~Grammophone

Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) was a prominent composer and organist of his era. While working at the Eisenbach court in Thüringen, he became a close friend of J.S. Bach's father, Johann Ambrosius Bach. As a parish musician, Pachelbel wrote most of his music for church services, especially for Mass and Vespers, when both singers and instrumentalists took part. His instrumental accompaniments are unusually rich. Although much of Pachelbel's music is lost, around twenty-six motets; nineteen "spiritual songs;" and thirteen Magnificats, geistliche Konzerte, and Masses have survived.

A close contemporary of Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel was by all accounts an outstanding keyboard player himself, and his compositions provide a fascinating stylistic bridge between early-Baroque composers such as Frescobaldi and Froberger (both of whom influenced him) and the later music of Bach and his contemporaries. Organist Matthew Owens embarks on a major exploration of the many extant organ works of Pachelbel beginning with this first volume recorded on the iconic 1965 Frobenius Organ of The Queen’s College Chapel in Oxford, considered a vital instrument in the classical organ revival in Britain…

A marvelous treatment of Pachelbel's lesser known works with a definitive performance of the all-too famous Canon. Too many interpreters of the Canon use the wrong tempo for this work, too slow and sentimental. This group does not and they have made it possible to listen to this work without gagging. They also do a wonderful job of presenting Buxtehude's chamber music. This composer is too often associated with ponderous Baroque organ music.

For anyone who ever wondered what Pachelbel was up to when he wasn't writing his Canon in D, this CD offers some lovely answers. (He was also playing the organ and teaching, and one of his students was Johann Sebastian Bach, in whose works it's possible to detect Pachelbel's influence.) While there is nothing as immediately catchy as the Canon, the sacred and secular arias and vocal concertos recorded here reveal a composer with a gift for attractive vocal writing and inventive instrumental accompaniments.