BACH TO THE FUTURE
Back in the days of 78s it would have been inconceivable to contemplate an issue of the complete organ works of J. S. Bach, with one prelude and fugue occupying one side of a 12” shellac disc. Come the revolution (331/3) and the mono long-player – swiftly followed by the introduction of stereo – it not only became possible, but a goal. As far as I can tell, it was (appropriately) Deutsche Grammophon that issued the German master’s first tribute, played by Helmut Walcha.
While doing a little research for this article I googled Complete Bach Organworks and found that these milestone recordings are still available on the DG Archiv sub-division, 4637122, 12 CDs. Some of these I heard once about 30 years ago (thanks to the London Borough of Hounslow Library Service) and, from memory, I found them a little dry and close-miked, in the then prevalent style of the 1950s.
The first of the more modern sets that I came up with were Wolfgang Stockmeier whose LP recordings of the 1980s, all played on Kreienbrinck organs, all make an absolutely adorable sound. I reviewed these in the Organ Club Journal some years back when 20 CDs cost £60 from my local record shop. Since then the issuing company has changed and they are now available from the Document label in two sets of 10 CDs, 223498 and 223490 at £13.99 each – well, that’s what the website said but I don’t believe it.
The other set I own is the second set that Lionel Rogg recorded on the Silbermann organ in Arlesheim. I bought these three 6LP box sets before I went to college (and subsequently sold there, poverty being part of student life then, but not crippling debt as now). These are again still available on Harmonia Mundi France HMX 290772.83 on 12 CDs. A thoroughly good set and, for an organ of the period (although not one on which Bach would have played, however much he might have liked) not in an unequal temperament.
The result of the google surprised me, as I had forgotten several recordings in the 70s: Michel Chapuis (I couldn’t find any trace that this set is still available, but the sounds he produced were superb), Marie-Claire Alain (still available on Erato, 4509-96745-2), Peter Hurford (again, available on Decca 4444102, 17 CDs), and from later, Kevin Bowyer (18 CDs on Nimbus) and, of course, David Sanger’s set on Meridian (eight out of 15 recorded released as of today).
The ones that surprised me, because I should have remembered them, were Christopher Herrick’s (Hyperion, 16 CDs at £80 and, the prime Bach scholar and keyboard player, Ton Koopman – supposedly re-released by Teldec last autumn on 16 CDs, although I couldn’t trace them in the limited time I had available. Again, Hans Fagius on BIS (who say all their recordings will continue to be available. These are, but only if you have SACD, upon which I think they have squeezed all the 18 CDs to five). There were two I had never heard of, George Ritchie on Raven, 11 CDs played on American organs, followed by Hans Helmut Tillmans on Danacord where 13 CDs have been released so far.
~ ~ Not just Bach organ music. ALL of Bach ~ ~
Where is this all going, you ask? Well, the other day I made the fatal mistake of going into about the only independent classical CD retailer between Brighton and Southampton (in Bognor, if you please!) and, looking for a copy of Sibelius 5th I found one and, as I was standing waiting for the staff to find the CD, a large box-set waved at me from the top shelf behind the counter. It turned out to be complete Bach. No, not just complete organ music, complete Bach. 155 CDs. £80. (Brilliant Classics 93102.) Well, what could I do? It was shrink-wrapped but had a list of artists on the outside: King’s College, Cambridge, The Sixteen, Chamber Choir of Europe, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp, James Bowman, Peter Schreier, Neue Bachisches Collegium Musicum, and, waving to me from his lonely position by the notice that promised a free CD ROM with texts, Hans Fagius from the BIS label. (By the way, there are over 480 pages of these, requiring a PDF reader.)
But what a line-up! I have been plugging away at it and have got through the organ works (18 CDs out of the 155). One of the organs used is tuned unequally, one is very sharp pitch (about a tone); I have a CD of complete Purcell organ music (on Harmonia Mundi again) using three organs all tuned at different pitches, and the tracks are mixed up. It is un-listenable-to. Most assuredly, none of the recordings I have mentioned are that. But Peter Hurford and Hans Fagius have arranged their CDs to be played as recitals, Hurford more than Fagius; the sheer impact of Fagius’ 542 Fantasia in g on the 1728 Cahman organ of Leufsta Bruk, Sweden nearly blew me out of my car after the Eb trio sonata (yes, I know I should have been listening somewhere a little better, but my devotion to duty knows no bounds). Stockmeier got dull after a while, even though the organs are simply gorgeous and better than any, as his registrations are less varied and more appropriate to each piece considered on its own. This makes Stockmeier a work of reference, backed up as it is by superb scholarship and technique. But the chorale preludes make Fagius’s recordings a worthy purchase – especially at the price.
I tend to use Rogg as a benchmark for judging these recordings, even though I don’t like the Arlesheim organ as much as the four used by Fagius. The wind is unsteady – as, of course, it might have been when hand-blown. I wish I had heard the Koopman recordings, but I haven’t, and I think four complete Bach organ works is enough for one person.
I should say that the rest of the recordings of the Cantatas, Ouverturen, ’cello suites, 48 (on harpsichord tuned to modern equal temperament, but there is a very odd note in the Prelude of the C#) are all completely acceptable and sometimes wonderful, from admittedly random and limited sampling. I thought there was too much prominence to the horns in the first Brandenburg, but this is carping. My favourite version of these is Collegium Aureum, no longer available on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 05472 77251 2, but some people find these too slow and they don’t like the original instrumentation (natural horns). So, what with one thing and another, the Brilliant Classics set has to be the steal of the year.
But, I still rather like the original 1960s recordings on the Grossmünster, Zürich by Lionel Rogg. I find them clean and full of life, with enough ambience but not so as to obscure the sound. He did a damn good version of the Hindemith Sonatas there, as well.
Philip Bailey - October 2007 – all Bach-ed out. Bach-ing mad. In need of aspirin – made, of course, from willow bach...
The first of the more modern sets that I came up with were Wolfgang Stockmeier whose LP recordings of the 1980s, all played on Kreienbrinck organs, all make an absolutely adorable sound. I reviewed these in the Organ Club Journal some years back when 20 CDs cost £60 from my local record shop. Since then the issuing company has changed and they are now available from the Document label in two sets of 10 CDs, 223498 and 223490 at £13.99 each – well, that’s what the website said but I don’t believe it.
The other set I own is the second set that Lionel Rogg recorded on the Silbermann organ in Arlesheim. I bought these three 6LP box sets before I went to college (and subsequently sold there, poverty being part of student life then, but not crippling debt as now). These are again still available on Harmonia Mundi France HMX 290772.83 on 12 CDs. A thoroughly good set and, for an organ of the period (although not one on which Bach would have played, however much he might have liked) not in an unequal temperament.
The result of the google surprised me, as I had forgotten several recordings in the 70s: Michel Chapuis (I couldn’t find any trace that this set is still available, but the sounds he produced were superb), Marie-Claire Alain (still available on Erato, 4509-96745-2), Peter Hurford (again, available on Decca 4444102, 17 CDs), and from later, Kevin Bowyer (18 CDs on Nimbus) and, of course, David Sanger’s set on Meridian (eight out of 15 recorded released as of today).
The ones that surprised me, because I should have remembered them, were Christopher Herrick’s (Hyperion, 16 CDs at £80 and, the prime Bach scholar and keyboard player, Ton Koopman – supposedly re-released by Teldec last autumn on 16 CDs, although I couldn’t trace them in the limited time I had available. Again, Hans Fagius on BIS (who say all their recordings will continue to be available. These are, but only if you have SACD, upon which I think they have squeezed all the 18 CDs to five). There were two I had never heard of, George Ritchie on Raven, 11 CDs played on American organs, followed by Hans Helmut Tillmans on Danacord where 13 CDs have been released so far.
~ ~ Not just Bach organ music. ALL of Bach ~ ~
Where is this all going, you ask? Well, the other day I made the fatal mistake of going into about the only independent classical CD retailer between Brighton and Southampton (in Bognor, if you please!) and, looking for a copy of Sibelius 5th I found one and, as I was standing waiting for the staff to find the CD, a large box-set waved at me from the top shelf behind the counter. It turned out to be complete Bach. No, not just complete organ music, complete Bach. 155 CDs. £80. (Brilliant Classics 93102.) Well, what could I do? It was shrink-wrapped but had a list of artists on the outside: King’s College, Cambridge, The Sixteen, Chamber Choir of Europe, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp, James Bowman, Peter Schreier, Neue Bachisches Collegium Musicum, and, waving to me from his lonely position by the notice that promised a free CD ROM with texts, Hans Fagius from the BIS label. (By the way, there are over 480 pages of these, requiring a PDF reader.)
But what a line-up! I have been plugging away at it and have got through the organ works (18 CDs out of the 155). One of the organs used is tuned unequally, one is very sharp pitch (about a tone); I have a CD of complete Purcell organ music (on Harmonia Mundi again) using three organs all tuned at different pitches, and the tracks are mixed up. It is un-listenable-to. Most assuredly, none of the recordings I have mentioned are that. But Peter Hurford and Hans Fagius have arranged their CDs to be played as recitals, Hurford more than Fagius; the sheer impact of Fagius’ 542 Fantasia in g on the 1728 Cahman organ of Leufsta Bruk, Sweden nearly blew me out of my car after the Eb trio sonata (yes, I know I should have been listening somewhere a little better, but my devotion to duty knows no bounds). Stockmeier got dull after a while, even though the organs are simply gorgeous and better than any, as his registrations are less varied and more appropriate to each piece considered on its own. This makes Stockmeier a work of reference, backed up as it is by superb scholarship and technique. But the chorale preludes make Fagius’s recordings a worthy purchase – especially at the price.
I tend to use Rogg as a benchmark for judging these recordings, even though I don’t like the Arlesheim organ as much as the four used by Fagius. The wind is unsteady – as, of course, it might have been when hand-blown. I wish I had heard the Koopman recordings, but I haven’t, and I think four complete Bach organ works is enough for one person.
I should say that the rest of the recordings of the Cantatas, Ouverturen, ’cello suites, 48 (on harpsichord tuned to modern equal temperament, but there is a very odd note in the Prelude of the C#) are all completely acceptable and sometimes wonderful, from admittedly random and limited sampling. I thought there was too much prominence to the horns in the first Brandenburg, but this is carping. My favourite version of these is Collegium Aureum, no longer available on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 05472 77251 2, but some people find these too slow and they don’t like the original instrumentation (natural horns). So, what with one thing and another, the Brilliant Classics set has to be the steal of the year.
But, I still rather like the original 1960s recordings on the Grossmünster, Zürich by Lionel Rogg. I find them clean and full of life, with enough ambience but not so as to obscure the sound. He did a damn good version of the Hindemith Sonatas there, as well.
Philip Bailey - October 2007 – all Bach-ed out. Bach-ing mad. In need of aspirin – made, of course, from willow bach...
Philip Bailey - October 2007 – all Bach-ed out. Bach-ing mad. In need of aspirin – made, of course, from willow bach...