Ann-Helena Schlüter - Holy Spirit (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

It is a truism that the organ, like no other instrument (even the piano), determines the impact of a piece of music which is played upon it. Conversely, however, the fact that not every work is suitable for every organ, is anything but trivial. For this immediately leads to questions around the connection between the instrument’s disposition and the compositional style, and what influence the choice of a specific instrument might have on the design of a programme. For example, it is obvious that the organ symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor cannot be played on an organ of the early baroque period, because these instruments lack the technical and constructional prerequi sites, exactly in the same way as the early eighteenth-century fortepiano lacks the technical and constructional prerequi sites for playing Beet hoven’s “Hammerklavier” sonata. On the other hand, however, Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ works are, as a matter of course, played on the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Saint- Sulpice church in Paris, where Widor was organist for sixty-four years. We will never know, of course, whether Bach would have relegated the possibilities of this organ – which was based on an eighteenth-century model and, after its completion in 1862, was the largest organ in the world together with the Walcker organ in Ulm cathedral – to the realm of utopia or whether he would have welcomed it as longed-for progress. Bach wrote his organ works for instruments which he not only played himself, but whose construction and peculiarities he penetrated to the last detail. Do we therefore gain an authentic impression of his music when it is played on the largest Thuringian organ in the town church of Walters hausen, built between 1724 and 1730 by Tobias Heinrich Gottfried Trost (c.1680-1759), even if it was not completed until 1755 by other organ builders? We can at least consider ourselves fortunate that a reference instrument for organ music, especially of the German baroque period, has been preserved and restored in an exemplary manner.

Tracklist:
1. Fantasia super 'Komm, heiliger Geist', BWV 651 (05:39)
2. Komm, heiliger Geist, BWV 652 (08:34)
3. Fugue in G Minor (04:34)
4. Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, BWV 527: I. Andante (05:07)
5. Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, BWV 527: II. Adagio e Dolce (05:41)
6. Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, BWV 527: III. Vivace (04:01)
7. Rapture (05:28)
8. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565: I. Toccata (02:23)
9. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565: II. Fugue (05:18)
10. Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott (04:09)
11. Fantasia in G Major ('Pièce d'Orgue'), BWV 572 (08:10)
12. Shades (07:11)
13. Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582: I. Passacaglia (07:08)
14. Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582: II. Thema Fugatum (05:00)
15. Six Chorales of diverse kinds ('Schübler Chorales'), Op. 5 No. 2, BWV 646: Wo soll ich fliehen hin ('Whither shall I Flee?') [Bonus Track] (01:41)


Thanks to the Original customer!