The two major organ works on these discs (his longest for organ) show Max Reger at the height of his powers; not only do they sustain a structural coherence over an impressive span, but they show an almost inexhaustible proliferation of invention. As well as the large-scale Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme and the Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue in E minor, this 2 CD Set includes a collection shorter preludes and fugues - the Five Easy Preludes and Fugues and two transcriptions of preludes and fugues by JS Bach from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

In his ninth and tenth of a total of fourteen releases of Bach’s collected organ works, Kare Nordstoga pulls together much of what was not collected from the composer’s side- preludes and fugues. The double form prelude (or toccata) and fugue has been an established form of composition since the 1600s. The North Germans Dietrich Buxtehude and Georg Bohm made a powerful contribution to this contrastive style in which the freer first part and the more rigorous second part are united in a dynamic whole. The young Johann Sebastian harvested significant impressions from these two composers during his time in Lubeck and Luneburg, and this album was recorded in Luneburg. Kare Nordstoga (b. 1954) studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Following his debut in 1978, he continued his studies in London and he was for a time organist at Ullern Church, before coming to Oslo Cathedral in 1984. He has also been associated with the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he was appointed professor in 1994.

REVIEW:

Nordstoga displays a fine architectural grasp of the works and builds them with convincing inevitability. Integrity is the hallmark of all his playing: He is careful but not cautious; deliberate and determined but not dragging and dour; sure-handed and solid but not showy or superficial. The only thing I do not find here is the uniquely electrifying excitement that Ton Koopman brings to his complete cycle. But if, unlike me, your taste in Bach organ performances runs more towards the older tradition of stately grandeur, then definitely consider investing in Nordstoga.

– Fanfare

"At his best, Rheinberger offers a surprising and often telling synthesis of Baroque counterpoint with a gently Romantic sensibility. One could say the same of Anton Bruckner, but, unlike Bruckner, there is no compelling forward thrust in this music—nothing heaven storming, or, unlike Beethoven, nothing that pushes the technical or aesthetic envelope. Rheinberger was content to use the musical language he inherited from his teachers, the organist Johann Georg Herzog and the composer Ferdinand Lachner, who was one of Schubert’s devotees. Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger (1839–1901) was born in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. A child prodigy organist, he was appointed, at age seven, to the post of town organist. Subsequent training in organ and composition took him to Munich and, ultimately, to Vienna where he lived out his days as a composer of 197 works—including symphonies, tone poems, chamber works, piano pieces, masses, requiems, and two operas—and as a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. Among his pupils can be counted Engelbert Humperdinck, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, and Horatio Parker. The Lachner connection is intriguing, in that Rheinberger’s life span effectively brought the world of Schubert into the first year of the 20th century. Seen in a different light, Rheinberger was a hopeless anachronism. Listening to this music, I wonder how he must have reacted to the “music of the future,” as exemplified in Wagner’s tonally ambivalent Tristan.

There is a good deal of Biedermeier charm in these two works, but that is only one of its constituent elements. At its core, it is made of sterner stuff. The Six Pieces for Violin and Organ, op. 150, masquerades as a Baroque suite. Its opening movement is a stylized French overture, which provides one of the piece’s finest moments, in Rheinberger’s aforementioned synthesis of Baroque and Romantic languages. Unlike how they would have been handled by the great Baroque masters, the following movements—Pastorale, Gigue, Elegie, Abendlied, and Theme and Variations—the liner notes claim, “do not have any real interconnection, either thematically or with regard to key.” The implication is that we have a handful of pretty genre pieces and not much more. I respectfully disagree. There are subtle thematic and harmonic links throughout these pieces, and some of them—the Pastorale and especially the Elegy—are achingly beautiful in their inconsolable melancholy. The second work, Suite for Violin and Organ, op. 166, is more closely reasoned. Its opening Preludium evokes the world of Bach. The following Canzone takes us into the worlds of Schubert and Brahms, although there is also a Brucknerian quality in its austerity and in its ability to make time stand still, qualities that also characterize the following Allemande with its Brahmsian trio section. The final Moto perpetuo is based on the same harmonic progression that underpins the whole suite, and it puts the violinist to the test—one that she passes with flying colors.

Violinist Line Most’s intonation is impeccable, and her tone production is ravishing. Organist Marie Ziener, playing the fine organ of David’s Church, Copenhagen (Marcussen & Son, 1980) is with her hand-in-glove. The recorded balances in this tricky repertoire are beyond reproach."

William Zagorski, FANFARE

A total of four organs group themselves around the listener in three dimensions in St. Michael's Church in Hamburg, and all four instruments are spectacularly employed on this Super Audio album. Church music director Christoph Schoener has designed a very special program for the organs in his workplace: music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy that has never been heard before in just this way. Schoener pulls all the stops on the central console and covers a spectrum ranging from the complete late-romantic forces of the entire organ system to the filigree murmuring of individual tone colors. A special treat: a solo for the echo organ installed high above in the ceiling sphere! The Six Preludes and Fugues op. 35 forming the focus here, though originally intended for the piano, create a phenomenal impression on the massive St. Michael's organ in this arrangement by Christoph Bossert. After all, it was Mendelssohn, who after the organ's Viennese classical "dry spell," supported the rehabilitation of this instrument. Accordingly, numerous piano pieces by him are ideally suited for transfers into the organ's much mightier sound dimension. Things get underway with the so very famous "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Even if many a bride and groom have entered many a church to this music, on this recording it is as if the listener could reach out and embrace the bride. Whether a "Song Without Words," a lovingly supplied fragment, or a "Theme with Variations," this Mendelssohn recording is a perfect complement to the Bach, Brahms, and Reger editions with which Christoph Schoener has brought delight to the organ world and beyond.

The flourishing of period instrument performance may have accustomed the world's ears to the sound of mean tuning, but institutional instruments such as the pipe organ have yet to catch up. There are very few organs in the world capable of playing in mean temperament, so period-style recordings are necessarily limited; thus the fortunate necessity of this CD of Georg Muffat's 'Apparatus musico-organisticus' being recorded on the Klosterneuberg Abbey organ in Austria. Beyond its authentic tuning, it has an amazing variety of tone colors, which Muffat's score takes full advantage of.
Muffat, a student of Jean-Baptiste Lully, lived and composed at the cusp of a new era in European history. He stepped beyond the limitations of national character, and sought to incorporate elements of Italian and German music in his own French compositions. He was also aware of the new tonality put forth in the 'Well-Tempered Clavier' by his contemporary, J. S. Bach. Though Part I of the 'Apparatus' uses mean tuning, he was eager to experiment with the newer even temperament, which he did in Part II, so it could not be recorded on this instrument. Given the choice, however, Part I is much more interesting listening.

The playing throughout is sensitive and glowing in this meditative and glistening work that recalls Vaughan Williams and Hovhaness.

The composer Jon Lord rose to fame in the 1970s as a member of Deep Purple. Celebrity collaborations between the group and Malcolm Arnold included Concerto for Group and Orchestra written and scored by John Lord and conducted by Malcolm Arnold. Lord has over the intervening years increasingly extended his reputation into the classical field. The Durham Concerto is the latest and most ambitious example to date. In this he is not alone, witness the various classical pieces by Paul McCartney - the latest being Ecce Cor Meum and the orchestral work Seven by Tony Banks of Genesis – a work recorded on Naxos. All are individual in their own way but a sign that some musicians with a rock-popular reputation felt the siren call of classical eternity even if we ignore the blurring of ‘boundaries’ represented by the work of Frank Zappa, Soft Machine and Tangerine Dream.

At the most meagre level this is a beautifully packaged delightful musical souvenir of Durham University's 175th anniversary in 2007. The concept might remind you of John Scott’s Colchester Symphony but this is in fact a seriously-intentioned extended orchestral suite of six movements grouped in pairs.

At the start long-held Tallis-like string chords speak out of the mists of antiquity. This is music that takes a slow-shifting shading from Hovhaness. The glistening murmur forms a backdrop to meditative solos from the wind instruments. Then at 3.10 comes Ruth Palmer's Lark-like violin solo speaking as a fragile human voice against the downward remorseless tread of time. Given the accent of this first movement it is some surprise that Lord was not among those pop-contemporary world musicians interviewed for Tony Palmer’s recent RVW film-biography. As this movement, entitled Cathedral at Dawn, rises to its peak it is the notable ecstasy of Vaughan Williams that is most closely echoed.

The composer's Hammond organ is featured in four of the six movements. It ushers in the second (Durham Awakes) with its atmospheric solo for Northumbrian Pipes. The pipes are played by that doyenne of the instrument Kathryn Tickell. Matthew Barley's solo cello acts as orator and encourager in this Copland-inflected music but ancient and melancholically serene voices from the Pipes – unable to escape celtic connections - and the solo violin are there too. The Hammond also intercedes at several points. This movement proves a fine example of the successful interweave of pipes, cello and violin.

Those first two movements form Part 1: Morning. Then comes Afternoon in the shape of another two movements. The first reflects the spiritual journey of St Cuthbert and the physical journey of his mortal remains to interment in the Cathedral. It communicates as a slow revelatory sunset much in the same atmosphere as the Dawn. This is followed by the equally introspective, cello-led From Prebends Bridge. Here the composer had in mind the view from the Bridge and the innumerable people who have stood and taken in that view down a thousand years.

The cello solo once or twice seems rather meandering before it gathers itself for a more direct and emotionally hard-hitting address. The music here reminded me of the Elgar concerto, Rubbra's Soliloquy and Holst's Invocation. Then comes a much needed rowdy movement in which students on a rag day and a miners gala meet head on. The brassy whoops here reminded me of Arnold. Again Lord's Hammond is to the fore, lending dynamism to its usual watery discourse - it's the nature of the instrument. There's plenty of forward pulse here and the orchestra have fun with the pizzicato writing. The Arnold accent appears strongly at 4:12 onwards with something of the Commonwealth Christmas Overture to be heard as well as a nicely burred and brassy Gaudeamus Igitur at 6:21. History takes hold again at the end of the movement and those sustained string chords reassert the long view. The Pipes invoke the sorrowing melancholy of heritage morphing without break into the long meditative finale: Durham Nocturne.

I hope we will hear more of Lord's classical compositions including the suite for strings, Disguises (2004) and the piano concerto Boom of the Tingling Strings (2003). Both are due out from EMI later in 2008. What else remains to be recorded?

The concept of the present piece and the use of an 'ethnic' instrument recall, as an idea, Shaun Davey's works – especially The Relief of Derry Symphony and The Brendan Voyage.

The playing throughout the Durham Concerto is sensitive and glowing with much accomplished and thoughtful work for the solo instruments. The recording produces an almost tangible effect without embracing an in-your-face pop balance.

Here is an extended work of continuity across six substantial movements. The predominant meditative character will instantly mesh with those who love John Barry’s Beyondness of Things, Tavener and Vaughan Williams.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

The performance of Duruflé's transcription for 2 organs of Handel's 8th Organ Concerto is a tour de force. Mere words become woefully irrelevant.

Originally recorded in 1967 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, this release projects, among other virtues, a tangible sense of occasion. The shrine's two organs had been installed and dedicated in 1965, but the Duruflés' recital of two years later was the first to utilize both instruments simultaneously, in Marcel Duruflé's transcription for two organs of the eighth of Handel's 16 concertos for organ and orchestra. That was, by the evidence on this release, a performance tour de force. The two instruments (the great and the chancel organ) are separated by a distance of some 300 feet, a virtual city block. The Duruflés overcame that vast and vastly disorienting sonic space by resorting to the sounds transmitted via telephone headsets rather than those of the acoustic surround. The result is a breathtaking synchronici-ty of attack and release, not merely of purely technical precision, but of musical affect as well.

Clarity and precision, not merely that of getting the right fingers to the right keys and pedals in a timely fashion, but of going, straightaway, to the heart of the musical discourse at hand, inform each track on this release. The little Schumann Canon in B Minor projects a playfulness that underscores its inherent irony. The Tournemire piece (a vast improvisation by that composer subsequently reconstituted by her husband) becomes, appropriately, César Franck on speed. Mme. Duruflé's clear-eyed realization of its every Easter-chant-derived iota converts it into a grippingly human drama, at once horrifying and consoling.

Of the incense-tinged Prelude and Fugue of Marcel Duruflé, I will say nothing. Mere words become woefully irrelevant.

If you've been lulled to sleep by my verbosity, wake up and get this one before it becomes, as is so much of the best that music has to offer, unavailable.

-- William Zagorski, FANFARE [1/2000]