Built by Arp Schnitger and his sons in 1721, the organ featured in this recording resides in the St. Michael Church in Sqolle, the Netherlands. Over the last few decades the organ has been restored to its full glory. The pieces chosen for this release come from the Husumer Orgelbuch (Husum Organ Book). This book is a collection of works for organ by North German masters. A notable Italian organist, scholar, and teacher, Manuel Tomadin won the Grand Prix of the Schnitger Organ Competition in 2011. He wrote all of the liner notes included in this release’s booklet, which includes extensive information on the organ.

The composer we know as Annibale Padovano was named after his native city of Padua, but in 1552 he became organist at St Mark’s Venice while the Dutch composer Adrian Willaert was master of music there. Padovano probably joined Willaert’s group of pupils, and he would have encountered the likes of Andrea Gabrieli and Cipriano de Rore. Nonetheless, his reputation rests on the slender book of organ music published in 1604, which reveals him as a master contrapuntalist of his age in the Ricercars, and no less innovative or inventive in his use of the Toccata form, clearly Venetian in spirit yet individual in expression. Vincenzo Pellegrini was born in Pesaro around 1562. Following his studies at the seminary, he became a canon regular of the cathedral in 1589 and appears to have been a popular teacher as well as a composer of church music. His work for organ likely dates from the end of his life, when he had become a canon in Milan Cathedral where there was a stronger tradition of instrumental composition. The Canzoni that have come down to us betray an evident debt to the French chanson tradition: simpler in form than Pellegrini, their melodic freshness and charm offers more than ample compensation in works such as ‘La Serpentina’ which has become a popular work of the period in its own right. This is Luca Scandali’s sixth album for Brilliant Classics, after imaginative collections of repertoire such as ‘Balli, battaglie e canzoni’ and 17th-century Italian organ music by Galuppi and Pasquini. For this album he has selected the historically significant organ in the Basilica of Santa Barbara in Mantova, which is tuned to the mean-tone temperament used in the era of Padovano and Pellegrini

To the general public, Masaaki Suzuki is known as the inspired leader of Bach Collegium Japan, currently undertaking a complete cycle of Bach's cantatas for BIS. He has also received much praise for his on-going recordings of the harpsichord music by the same composer. But his début was actually as an organist - he started playing regularly at Sunday services at the age of 12! When going to the Netherlands to study, Suzuki pursued parallel courses, graduating with a soloist's diploma in both organ and harpsichord. The years spent in The Netherlands also explains his familiarity with the musical world of J.P. Sweelinck, and with the traditions of the Dutch Reformed Church with its ties to Calvin and his 'Genevan Psalter'. The attractively varied programme on this disc alternates secular music for the organ with Sweelinck's settings of psalms from the Genevan Psalter. Due to the suspicion with which the Dutch Reformed Church - and Calvin - regarded instrumental music in religious contexts, these settings were not intended to accompany the congregational singing, but were rather played either before or after the service, providing an opportunity for meditation and afterthought. They fill a similar role on this disc, sandwiched as they are between the more extrovert Toccatas and Fantasias, but also testify to the central place these psalms had in Sweelinck's work. As an epitaph put it, it was he 'who put to music David's royal word, And made it to resound in Zion, in Holland it was heard.' The organ chosen by Masaaki Suzuki is a splendid instrument built by Marc Garnier according to the Northern German and Dutch style of the mid-17th century, especially for the use in the services of the Kobe congregation of the Reformed Church of Japan, where the tradition of congregational singing of Calvin's Genevan Psalter is particularly strong.