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.

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This is the third complete cycle of J.S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for violin solo BWV 1001-1006 transcribed for a plucked instrument to be released within the last few years. Paul Galbraith's transcription for his modified 12-string guitar was issued first in 1998 by Delos (3232). A year later Hopkinson Smith recorded his cycle for Astrée Naive (E8678) performing on a 13-course baroque lute. On this new MDG recording Frank Bungarten offers his ideas performing on a modern guitar. All are beautiful; all are passionately performed by artists who obviously regard their respective undertakings as labors of love; and all remind us again and again how inspired and sublime this most perfect music for solo instrument is, however transcribed.


So what are the differences besides the instrumentation? Of the three, Galbraith generally chooses the swiftest tempos, which when combined with his cello-like performing posture alludes more to the way we're accustomed to hearing the works performed on violin. Galbraith obviously is familiar with the capabilities of this instrument of his own invention--enough to describe his set as the most "virtuosic" of the three. Smith's acount has much going for it too. For one, Smith's is the most historically informed cycle, since he performs on a copy of a period lute, and this often-intimate music admittedly benefits from its almost clavichord-like sound. Smith's performances also are the less mimetic of the three, in the sense that he seems to be interested less in imitating what a violin can make of this music and more with what a lute can. In turn, Smith also takes many more liberties than Galbraith and Bungarten. Listen, for example, to the way he enters the first sonata BWV 1001. Rather than simply imitating the violin's sharp rise, he begins quietly, slowly allowing the integrity of each string to be heard as only a plucked instrument can.

Which now brings us to this MDG set. Frank Bungarten is a fine guitarist whose transcriptions fastidiously attempt to "let the music speak for itself"--meaning that the only liberties he takes are technical ones that make it possible for this violin music to be performed on a guitar. Listen for instance to the way he articulates the final Allegro of Sonata No. 2. Here Bungarten's imaginative use of note for note chordal progressions sustains the dance with remarkable clarity. Equally impressive is Bungarten's clever use of shading and dynamics, particularly in the Tempo di Borea movement of Partita No. 1. The elongated lines that establish the opening theme are given more than enough emphasis without sacrificing any of the quieter intricacy of the inner details.

Bungarten's deft, expertly executed performances certainly are the most straightforward--which is not to say uninflected--of the group. I'm sure that most of us already have at least one recorded cycle of Bach's sonatas and partitas performed on violin. I'm equally sure that far fewer listeners possess one of these fine sets of transcriptions. It's a pity, because to hear this music rethought and applied by such capable musicians as Galbraith, Smith, and Bungarten truly heightens the miracle of it. MDG's sound and overall presentation are as fine as ever. Bungarten also provides informative notes in the multilingual booklet.
--John Greene, ClassicsToday.com

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Ludwig Thuille participated in "Ritter's Round Table" with his friend Richard Strauss. For the young composer still in search of his musical self, the encounter with Liszt's ardent admirer and Wagner's friend Alexander Ritter, in whose home these gatherings were held, must have been a revelation. Thuille enthusiastically incorporated the harmonic expansions of the New Germans into his compositions. On this re release of a long sold-out recording from 1987, the Stuttgart Wind Quintet and the pianist Dennis Russell Davies perform sextets by Thuille and Francis Poulenc. This re release is a model example illustrating the principles for which MDG has stood for forty years. Outstanding artists perform magnificent music often situated off the mainstream. The careful selection of just the right performance space, a piano excellently prepared for the occasion, and choice microphones form the basis for a freely resonating, natural sound picture. The greatest possible precision, with finishing touches judged by the trained ears of sound engineers, means that many recordings continue to be audiophile benchmarks even today.

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Includes work(s) by Franz Xaver Gruber, various composers. Soloist: Florian Pagitsch.

Ninety-one years and a turn of century later, Alban Berg's String Quartet Op. 3 no longer shocks as it once did, but rather sounds more and more like an accessible piece of finely wrought chamber music. That's not to say it contains stretches of "Hum-um-umable melody" (to quote Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along), but with careful and repeated listening the ear discerns motifs and harmonic patterns where formerly there seemed naught but noise. Such revelations are greatly aided by the Leipzig String Quartet's generously romantic approach both to this and to the Lyric Suite. Its warm legato and passionate phrasing humanize and romanticize Berg's highly personal masterpieces, both created in connection with love affairs. This is in marked contrast to the Galimir Quartet's strident and angular performances on Vanguard, which place Berg more firmly in the epoch of the Second Viennese School. But the Leipzigers are capable of much fierce energy too, especially in the more explosive moments of the Lyric Suite, which they play with fearless alacrity.


The disc also includes Webern's brief (even for him) Three Pieces for String Quartet, featuring the ethereal singing of Christiane Oelze in the second piece, a setting of one of the composer's poems. At two minutes and ten seconds, it's over before you realize it, but even the much longer Berg works have this effect, thanks to the stunning Leipzig Quartet performances, recorded in top-drawer sound by MDG.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com