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Dietrich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707) Organ Music Volume 6
Prelude and Fugue in G minor, BuxWV150 [8:35]
Canzona, BuxWV166 [6:00]
Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren, BuxWV215 [2:50]
Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren, BuxWV213 [7:40]
Magnificat Primi Toni, BuxWV204 [4:48]
Præludium in F Major, BuxWV145 [7:73]
Ich dank dir, lieber Herre, BuxWV194 [5:52]
Canzonetta in A major, BuxWV225 [2:47]
Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit, BuxWV222 [2:26]
Præludium in C major, BuxWV136 [7:06]
Auf meinen lieben Gott, Partita, BuxWV179 [4:30]
Toccata in G, BuxWV165 [7:04]
Præludium in G, BuxWV162 [6:47]
Julia Brown
(organ - Martin Pasi)
rec. Saint Cecilia Cathedral, Omaha, Nebraska, 18-20 September
2006
Booklet with organ specification and notes in English and
German NAXOS 8.570311 [74:21]
This is the sixth volume
in the ongoing Naxos series of Buxtehude’s organ music. It
has been something of a long haul, begun in 2001, and with
a year’s gap between the recording dates of this and the
last volume. The pace is now accelerated for the composer’s
fourth centenary: as I complete this review, I note that
Volume 7 is due for release on October 29th, 2007. Like
Volume 5, and like the forthcoming Volume 7, the music on
this CD is performed by Julia Brown on the organ of St Cecilia
Cathedral, Omaha. My colleague Chris Bragg (CB) gave a
detailed description of this remarkable organ and its capabilities
in his review
of Volume 5, a review which also contains hyperlinks
to the website of Martin Pasi, the organ’s creator, and to
the reviews of volumes 1-4 of this series.
This is, indeed, an instrument
for all seasons. The specification in the booklet indicates
that most of the stops on the Great Organ and Pedals, plus
all those on the Positive Organ, are capable of being played
in both well-tempered tuning and ¼ comma mean-tone, thus
making it suitable for music of Buxtehude’s time and earlier. Not
being blessed with perfect pitch, I take as gospel CB’s word
that Julia Brown probably uses only the mean-tone stops. As
a keyboard player, he may have little more sense of perfect
pitch than I do, but he recognises the odd occasion when
the music goes beyond the capabilities of the tuning and
sounds, as he puts it ‘rancid’. It would have been helpful
if the booklet had indicated the registration and tuning
employed for each piece, but I did not hear any such ‘rancid’ moments
on this volume.
Otherwise, like CB, I
was very impressed with the sound which the organ makes – I
imagine that it would sound equally right for seventeenth-century
French music – and the sympathetic acoustic in which it is
recorded. Indeed, the recording is pretty well beyond reproach:
I was not aware of any impediment between me and the music
in listening to this CD – it sounded equally well on both
my set-ups.
I found Julia Brown’s
performances at least as impressive as CB found those on
the earlier recording. I recognised the virtues which he
praised without sharing his feeling that her playing is a
little too quirky at times. I note that she is a former
doctoral student of Wolfgang Rübsam, who is named as ‘Producer,
Engineer and Editor’ of this recording. It may be that I
have grown so accustomed to his style, on his many Naxos
Bach recordings, that I do not notice any of the rhythmical
eccentricity of which CB complains in his former student. Sometimes
the music of Buxtehude, Bach and their contemporaries benefits
from a little ‘nudge’ here and there.
Julia Brown also performed
the music on the second CD in this series, though on a different
organ. Gary
Higginson praised her performance and choice of registration
on that disc, comments which I am pleased to endorse as applicable
here, too. I also endorse his comments on the quality of
the recording.
Though the actual registration
employed for each piece is not indicated, it never seemed
to me inappropriate. The organ contains both 16’ and 32’ sub-bass
pedal stops but these feature only in well-tempered tuning:
the fact that I do not hear them here – not that I wanted
to hear them in this music – adds to my belief that CB is
correct in assuming that mean-tone is employed throughout. Some
of the music, such as the Canzona in C (track 2) is scored
for manuals only – perhaps intended for alternative use on
the harpsichord or clavichord – and these pieces are played
with appropriate delicacy of touch, though that should not
be taken to mean that Julia Brown makes them sound like the
aural equivalents of Meissen figurines.
The programme on this
CD is very similar to that on Volume 5: Four Præludia,
several Chorale Preludes, a Magnificat on the first
tone, a Canzona, a Canzonetta, a 5-movement Partita and a
Toccata. It is an attractive programme and would make as
good an introduction as any to the organ music of Buxtehude. If
you are as yet unfamiliar with this music, I urge you to
buy this or one of the earlier CDs in the series. As Don
Satz writes in his review
of Volume 4, “Buxtehude’s organ music is one of the glories
of the Baroque period. Readers not familiar with this body
of works are advised to investigate and reap the tremendous
rewards.” Of the works on this recording I have been able
to find only the Canzonetta in a (track 8) online. (The
opening bars of this online edition do not quite match what
Julia Brown plays.)
Of course, it helps to
know the original Lutheran chorales on which the Chorale
Preludes are based, as also in the case of Bach’s works of
this type: the original hearers would, of course, have been
as familiar with the tunes of these chorales as congregations
were in the more recent past with the Missa de Angelis. It
doesn’t matter that we modern listeners are most unlikely
to be familiar with these Chorales, but it does mean that
we are likely to appreciate the free-form works more fully.
Perhaps that is why the Præludia and
the other free-form works come over more effectively on this
recording – or perhaps it is because these works were to
be influential on the next generation of organ composers,
including Bach. The fugal sections of the Præludia make
them effectively Preludes and Fugues which Bach might have
been proud to have written. Bach certainly learned from
his visit to Lübeck: when he returned to Arnstadt, the council
chided him not only for neglect of duty but more importantly
for introducing various strange embellishments and alien
notes – “viele wunderliche variationes und viele frembde
Thone” – into the hymns. Appropriately, one of Buxtehude’s Præludia opens
the CD and another closes it. Both approach the quality
of Bach’s best music and both are well performed.
Whereas we can appreciate
the quality of composition and the virtuosity of the playing
for their own sakes in the free-form pieces, part of the
game in writing Chorale Preludes was (almost) to hide the
tune so that it was just recognisable if the listeners searched
for it. Some recordings of Bach’s Chorale Preludes include
the chorale tunes themselves so that the modern listener
may recognise them. That does not happen here. The programming
of two variations on Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herrn,
however, one longer and more elaborate than the other, does
give the modern listener the opportunity to compare two treatments
of the same chorale melody.
Other ongoing series of
Buxtehude’s music currently vie for our attention. Perhaps
Naxos’s own reissue of some of his choral works on 8.557251,
enthusiastically recommended by my colleagues Glyn Pursglove and Marsk Sealey in
April 2007, should take pride of place, closely followed
by another Naxos CD of his choral music on 8.557041, recommended by
John France in 2004. Then again, there is a Carus CD of Cantatas
(83.193), which both Jonathan Woolf and I recently
recommended, not to mention the ongoing Ton Koopman series
of the Complete Works (two volumes of organ music and two
of vocal works so far). I have not yet heard any of the
CDs in the Koopman series but I was very impressed, apart
from the odd fluff inevitable in live performance, by the
Radio 3 broadcast of the performance which he gave in the
Marienkirche in Lübeck in May, 2007. That concert of Buxtehude
Cantatas ended with Bach’s Cantata No.21, with no sense that
the first 80 minutes were at all inferior to the conclusion.
Robert Hugill highly recommended
the first (CC72241)
and second (CD72244)
CDs of vocal music in the Koopman series. Chris Bragg was
much less enthusiastic about the first two discs of the organ
music, however. (CC72242
and CC72243). I note from the heading of CB’s review
that Koopman appears to polish off the Præludium in
G, BuxWV162, in two-thirds the time that Julia Brown takes! As
her tempo seems to me only very marginally slow in places
(if that) I can only imagine that the articulation and phrasing
suffer seriously at Koopman’s speed.
Another recent recording,
David Hamilton’s on Divine Art DDA25041,
was recommended by MK as a well-chosen and varied collection
of some of Buxtehude’s finest organ works: no overlaps with
the present CD, though containing yet another setting of Nun
lob, mein Seel’ den Herren (BuxWV 212) and another Magnificat
primi toni (BuxWV 203) albeit at rather more than twice
the price of the Naxos.
Riches, indeed, but don’t
overlook what this new Naxos CD has to offer, not least the
notes from Keith Anderson, as informative as ever: as accessible
to the novice as to the expert.