Flemming Dreisig - Messis - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Langgaard / Flemming Dreisig - Messis [COMPACT DISCS] date 08/15/1998

Burkhard Schmilgun writes InchThe logical continuation of the series InchOrgan Works of the North German Baroque,Inch recorded by Friedhelm Flamme, is the works of Dietrich Buxtehude, the most important master of North German organ music. In order to underscore the features of his personal style of interpretation, which is the result of decades of study of virtually the entire repertoire of North German music, the incredible and mostly intact original Treutmann organ in the Grauhof monastery near Goslar was selected. This organ can produce Buxtehude's innovative, visionary sound artistry in a very different way than the well-known Schnitger organs in North Germany. Each album is set up as an exciting concert program which shows the diversity of Buxtehude's compositions - free-form and chorale-based works, works for manuals only or with virtuosic pedal playing, and whose styles vary from lighter canzonettas, weighty basso ostinato forms to strict movements in »erudite counterpoint«. This recording also shows some of the infinite timbral possibilities of the Treutmann organ, both in their variety but also the tension felt in the different tonalities. Vol. II thus continues this series of recordings with representative works of the greatest masters of organ music before Johann Sebastian Bach as well as his contemporaries. The Treutmann organ, thanks to it's tuning, also allows for a faithful stylistic rendering of pieces in distant tonalities, which would be impossible on instruments with mean tone tuning.

After many attempts to obtain the rights to all the scores, we now at long last are able to Auguste Fauchard's complete organ works in the congenial interpretation by Friedhelm Flamme. Fauchard was highly successful as a student in Paris, where Vincent d'Indy was his composition teacher and André Marchal and Louis Vierne were his organ teachers. Vierne doubtless had the greatest influence on Fauchard the composer. Four symphonies representing the highest compositional standards and the most demanding playing technique form the heart of Fauchard's organ oeuvre, and in them we repeatedly catch glimpses of his model Vierne in matters of thematic design and compositional-technical details. This applies in very special measure to Fauchard's harmonies, to which he nevertheless succeeds in lending a thoroughly individual coloration through amalgamation with modulations reminiscent of Sigfrid Karg-Elert. As a result, it may be claimed that Auguste Fauchard with his four symphonies once again made a very important contribution to the genre of the organ symphony.