Bernard Foccroulle devotes his latest recording - the last of the anthology of Northern German organ music of the Baroque period - to Jacob Praetorius and Melchior Schildt, both pupils of Sweelinck. Praetorius and Schildt's music is not only strongly marked by Lutheran tradition, in which the chorale played a fundamental part, but also by other influences, principally Italian, that prepared the way for the explosion of the stylus fantasticus at the end of the 17th century. Bernard Foccroulle was born in Li�ge (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. He has performed dozens of world premieres of works by Philippe Boesmans, Brian Ferneyhough, Betsy Jolas, Xavier Darasse, Jonathan Harvey and Pascal Dusapin, among others. In the 1980s, he was a member of the Ricercar Consort, an ensemble devoted mainly to German baroque music. Since then, he has made his name as an organist as well as a composer and artistic director of major musical institutions.