This edition of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach performed by Bernard Foccroulle was recorded between 1982 and 1997 on a series of splendid historical instruments and provides a clear picture of Bach’s development as a composer of instrumental music. This complete edition also contains works attributed to Bach as well as the recording of the Chorale Fantasia Wo Gott der Herr BWV 1128 that has only been rediscovered in 2008.

Tarquinio Merula belonged to a generation of Italian composers, all of whom were born around 1600, for whom the concertante style was no longer a new idiom but a preferred musical medium, one that had been acquired in childhood and which had become not only the dominant musical language of the time but which was also to spread across the whole of Europe. Tarquinio Merula was renowned as a violin and organ virtuoso and published a wide variety of instrumental music per la chiesa e la camera. Here Inalto explores Merula's sacred works, including the famous lullaby Hor che e tempo di dormire. His works may seem simple at times, but are impressively innovative; whilst sacred in character, they are rooted in human emotion.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Franz Tunder. Soloist: Bernard Foccroulle.

Although Girolamo Frescobaldi's organ works draw on the polyphonic tradition of the Renaissance, few virtuosos of the early 17th century tackled with as much originality the expressive movement that opened the way for what we consider 'Baroque music'. He transposed for the keyboard this sense of the affect and virtuosity that, in the sphere of opera, overturned all the conventions of vocal music. He recommended flexible playing, freed of any overly strict constraints, insisting on the fact that the musician must play 'con affetti cantabili' (with the affects of singing). Belgian organist, composer, conductor, and opera director Bernard Foccroulle performs these works beautifully. He is currently the director of the Theatre royal de la Monnaie.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed his most renowned organ works — the Toccatas, the Fantasia in G minor and the Passacaglia in C minor — in Weimar, in the stylus fantasticus so beloved of his Northern German masters Buxtehude and Reinken. Bach here follows in his predecessors’ footsteps in all of these large-scale works: the freely inventive writing in the preludes is linked to the rigor of the fugal construction and so brings them to a majestic conclusion.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed his most renowned organ works — the Toccatas, the Fantasia in G minor and the Passacaglia in C minor — in Weimar, in the stylus fantasticus so beloved of his Northern German masters Buxtehude and Reinken. Bach here follows in his predecessors’ footsteps in all of these large-scale works: the freely inventive writing in the preludes is linked to the rigour of the fugal construction and so brings them to a majestic conclusion. This recording includes all of these magnificent masterpieces. Bernard Foccroulle was born in Liège (Belgium) in 1953. He began his international career as an organist in the mid-70s, playing a wide range of repertoire from Renaissance to Contemporary Music. His discography as a soloist includes more than forty CDs. He has won awards including the Diapason d’Or for his recording of Dietrich Buxtehude’s complete organ works for the Ricercar label, as well as for the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he recorded on beautifully preserved historic instruments.

The collection of toccatas Apparatus musico-organisticus, published in 1690, immediately established Georg Muffat as one of the greatest organists of his century. A veritable reference in the organ repertoire, appreciated for it's stylistic diversity, this work testifies to Muffat's ambition to blend European styles while exploring the expressive possibilities of the Baroque organ. Bernard Foccroulle deploys a range of emotions that underline the breadth and harmonic richness of the toccatas, performed on an organ emblematic of the French style that suits them so well, to which is added the delicate Sonata a violino solo, executed with brio by Marie Rouquie.

The music of Francisco Correa de Arauxo, still regrettably neglected, constitutes a peak of organ literature in Spain and an exceptional bridge between the Renaissance and the Baroque. His Facultad Orgánica (1626) is both a treatise on the performance of organ music and a collection of sixty-nine pieces of outstanding quality. Three albums will give the most complete picture possible of his output, played by Bernard Foccroulle on historic organs in Andalusia and Castile. Singers and musicians from the InAlto ensemble will perform pieces by Correa alongside some of the major composers he mentions in his preface, including Josquin, Cabezón, Gombert and La Rue.

The Brussels court attracted some of the greatest composers and organists of the time at the beginning of the 17th century, including Peter Philips, Peeter Cornet, John Bull, and, a little later, Abraham Van den Kerckhoven, all of whom explored new ways of making organs sound. Flemish and Walloon organ builders throughout Europe, and in Spain and France in particular, were building instruments at that time that were to have a profound influence on organ building in those countries.