Matthias Hofs (trumpet) and Matthias Janz (organ) present a program of works by English masters from the Renaissance to the late Baroque. The instrumental combination of trumpet and organ let this repertoire resound in festive splendor. The musical performance is historically informed and played on modern instruments. Among the works on this album are songs from “The Musical Entertainer 1737”, English Dances and Trumpet Voluntaries by George Frideric Handel, John Stanley and many more.

The fifth volume of Masaaki Suzuki’s series of Bach’s works for organ features one of the most important surviving instruments from Bach’s time, made by the German organ builder Christoph Treutmann the Elder. Widely known for its extraordinary tonal quality, the instrument was built between 1734 and 1737. A recent general restoration preserved all essential structural elements or renewed them while remaining faithful to the originals, making this an ideal instrument for Bach interpreters who wish to come close to the sound world of the Leipzig Thomaskantor.

Suzuki now takes up the Orgel-Büchlein (literally, “little organ book”), a collection of 45 short chorale preludes on melodies from the Lutheran hymn book, a project that came into being in connection with Bach’s appointment as organist and chamber musician at the Duke’s court in Weimar in 1708. Presenting chorales for different periods of the church year, this collection serves as a general guide to text-based composition focusing on word- sound relationships and content-specific musical expression. Three Preludes and Fugues complete the second volume dedicated to the Orgel-Büchlein, illustrating the principle of variety and structure historically practised by concert organists in order to demonstrate the tone colours and expressive possibilities of their instrument.

The Organ Concertos Op. 4 and Op. 7 by George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) were originally composed as musical interludes to be performed during the intervals of the Oratorios. Handel chose to write for the organ, an instrument hitherto relegated to the liturgical service, to emancipate it and have it take on a new character, more brilliant and appealing to the public. From the scores it is clear that these concertos do not have to be played on a large instrument, as they only sporadically require the use of the pedalboard, which therefore made the concertos also performable on the harpsichord.

Transcription, the art of transcribing repertoire for a different instrument or ensemble combination, is absolutely an integral part of the boundless organ and keyboard literature dating from the distant Renaissance to the present day. One great example from the organ repertory is composer and organist Clément Loret’s (1833–1909) transcription of Handel’s Organ Concertos for solo organ. The two composers complement each other – Handel, a great virtuoso and dazzling composer of the Baroque period capable of gripping the most disparate audiences, and Loret, a late Romantic belonging to the great French school of Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, where the organ is placed center stage. Loret intervenes in Handel’s work whilst maintaining its spirit. He preserves the dense contrapuntal writing, merging organ and orchestral parts without reserve, and always retaining the brilliance and vivacity that characterise the original in virtuosic projection towards the modern symphonic organ. This all makes for a large sound and an array of significant technical and stylistic difficulties for the performer.

The set of Op. 4 and Op .7 taken together includes 12 concertos in total, each with its own character, shape, style and atmosphere. The tonalities used are those that were the most frequent and most in vogue during the Baroque period, except perhaps for the concerto in A major Op.7, which stands out not only for its tonality, but also for the particular elegance and fluctuation of its fugue theme.

This album is dedicated to Tomaso Pegolotti, a character who held the double role of notary public and musician in the land of the Estense dukedom between Modena and Reggio Emilia. In fact, his father Livio initiated him into both the study of music and law, and thanks to his commitment and his talent, Tomaso had a brilliant career in both professions. The collection of the "Trattenimenti armonici da camera [...] opera prima", dedicated to Prince Foresto d'Este in 1698, includes his entire instrumental production, as the planned second work was finally never terminated due to Pegolotti's involvement in some unexpected political clash also connected to one of his judicial publications.

The collection consists of twelve sonatas from which can be deduced that the author possessed considerable technical skills on the violin. The Opera Quinta ensemble led by Fabrizio Longo (former protagonist of other important productions by Tactus: tc.630201, tc.670290 and tc.621602) is a solid reference in the musical practice of early and Baroque music.

The organ sonatas of Josef Rheinberger still feature large in the repertoire of church organists everywhere, thanks to their attractive melodies and fluent writing for the instrument. Rheinberger’s industry and his skill as a teacher have overshadowed his gifts as a composer in other genres, which this new release helps to redress with suites and tone-pictures for the combination of strings and organ.

While Rheinberger’s Abendlied Op.69 No.2 holds a Brahmsian appeal for choruses, his instrumental Abendlied Op.150 is much less familiar. Yet the combination of string- instrument and organ is intensely evocative of the warm mood of recollection intrinsic to the German genre of ‘Evening Songs’; Rheinberger balances the two instruments with great skill and sympathy so that the organ always supports the cello’s noble cantabile. The Abendlied features here in two recordings; arranged for cello, and in its original version for violin, as part of the complete set of six pieces. Cellist Marco Dalsass also contributes an arrangement of the Pastorale and Elegie from the same set, and it proves fascinating to compare the angelic song of the violin with the warmer baritonal register of the cello in the same music. Both violin and cello join the organ for the Suite Op.149: a substantial four-movement work lasting 40 minutes, opening in a passionate but Baroque-inflected C minor. A meditative set of variations on an original theme is followed by a solemn sarabande, beautifully conceived for all three instruments in the vein of a Romantic slow movement but essentially ecclesiastical in tone. Baroque forms – a free-flowing prelude, a tender Canzone and graceful Allemande – also soften the C minor tonality of the Suite Op.166 for violin and organ, before the Moto perpetuo finale brings the suite to a dazzling close with the most extrovert music in the collection.

The large-scale Bach Organ Landscapes project featuring J.S. Bach’s entire organ oeuvre recorded on a range of instruments aims to provide an overview of organ-playing and organ-building traditions that were key to Bach’s composing. With a keen eye to the unique cultural organ legacy of the places associated with Bach, Halubek has placed Bach’s original sound at the heart of his project. The recordings are accompanied by digital material that offer an almost tactile access to the great composer’s sound universe. This Album features the legendary Silbermann organ in Freiberg near Dresden.

Since 2010 the Associazione La Cantoria has dedicated its energies to the rediscovery of unpublished musical compositions from Rome, transcribing, studying and performing these both live and recording them under the Tactus record label. This cd is dedicated to the musician, composer and organist Francesco Giovannini who was chapelmeister at the Church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli in the 18th century, and whose works are conserved in the archives of the Order of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God in Rome. The best way to understand and appreciate a liturgical musical composition is to savor it the very same context where it was born and for which it was conceived. This is what this cd intends to do.Composer: to allow us to live the sonorous experience of an ancient mass of the Roman rite. These late-Baroque compositions by Francesco Giovannini shine like precious gems set in an antique piece of jewelry made of Gregorian chant, readings, and orations where the organ is heard almost fleetingly in those moments when the sound of the voice and other instruments is superfluous or even prohibited.

The large-scale Bach Organ Landscapes project featuring J.S. Bach’s entire organ oeuvre recorded on a range of instruments aims to provide an overview of organ-playing and organ-building traditions that were key to Bach’s composing. With a keen eye to the unique cultural organ legacy of the places associated with Bach, Halubek has placed Bach’s original sound at the heart of his project. The recordings are accompanied by digital material that offer an almost tactile access to the great composer’s sound universe. This Album features the legendary Silbermann organ in Freiberg near Dresden.

The new album "Oceanic" by Iveta Apkalna is a collection of two expansive organ works and two orchestral interludes with maritime connotations, showcasing Apkalna's special relationship with the sea as a musician who grew up on the Baltic. The album features Bernd Richard Deutsch's "Okeanos," which Iveta Apkalna describes as the best contemporary organ concerto. It also includes Maurice Ravel's "Une barque sur l'océan," a key work of musical Impressionism, and Jean Sibelius's "The Oceanides," a personal "Rondo of the Waves" along similar lines to Debussy's "La mer."

By its title and its twelve violin concertos, Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico immediately captures the imagination. Rinaldo Alessandrini and his Concerto Italiano, with the addition of high-calibre keyboardists, present the full collection with the six additional adaptations for keyboard by Bach. This Opus 3 published by Vivaldi in 1711 vibrates with the virtues of a poetic energy taken to the highest level of expressivity, embodied in the subtle and virtuosic exchanges between a string orchestra and four, two, then one solo violins. The stylistic principles developed in each piece were completely new and inspired for the time, the virtuosity intense, and the success considerable, rapidly reaching beyond the frontiers of La Serenissima. Which is how Bach, seven years younger than Vivaldi and drawn to the polyphonic dimension of these “multi-voiced” pieces, adapted several of them for organ and harpsichord.

This unexpected finding, found in an old trunk in an attic in Trento, makes it possible for us now to reconstruct a brilliant passage in the musical history of that city. The trunk contained some organ scores that had been written by Davide Urmacher (organist at the nearby church of San Pietro) and played by him, first on the fifteenth century organ, then on the organ made in 1862 by Giovanni Battista De Lorenzi, from Vicenza. Together with other scores countersigned by members of the Dall’Armi family, owners of a shop near the Ginnasio in Via San Pietro, this treasure chest has yielded some invaluable organ scores that were in use in the city between the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. This entire collection, together with others (both public and private) existing in Trentino, provides a complex, varied and wide-ranging picture of the organ music that was being played in that period over the entire territory, with a lively circulation of material. The organist Simone Vebber makes use of a historic nineteenth-century organ in the performance of the compositions in the classic theatrical styles of the time.