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Buxtehude Organ Works     Rainer Oster Arte Nova 74321 63633-2 66' 06"

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This collection is well chosen and ordered, and I played it straight through with increasing pleasure. Many of the toccatas and choral fantasies are in the 'stylus fantasticus', with sudden changes of pace and emotion. Buxtehude's preludes are basically toccatas with fugue and toccata-like passages alternating freely;each of those in D and A minor incorporates two fugues. The Passacaglia in D minor may have influenced Bach, who travelled to visit Buxtehude and hear him play.

Buxtehude went to Hamburg to visit Arp Schnitger, whose delightful organ at St Jacob's Church there has been chosen for this recording. It is a large instrument with four manuals and a fine assortment of characteristic stops, which are well selected in this recital. For me, Buxtehude had been a worthy forerunner of J S Bach, but himself a somewhat shadowy figure. This collection brings him into focus as a fine composer in his own right. Well recorded and with adequate background notes - I have not enjoyed an organ CD so well for many a month.

Reviewer

Peter Grahame Woolf


Reviewer

Peter Grahame Woolf


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