Fugue State Films

Fugue State Films & RCO Cinema: Bach – The Great Toccata

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

The Great Toccata
Daniel Moult
Fugue State Films & RCO Cinema

I have reviewed several of the excellent films produced by Will Fraser’s award-winning Fugue State Films (see here). Their latest offering heralds a new and welcome collaboration with the Royal College of Organists in a new RCO initiative, RCO Cinema, which aims to bring “high-quality films about the organ and its music available to the widest possible audience around the world” Fugue State films on RCO Cinema will be available to watch, free, for around six to eight weeks. Future films will include pairs of films on the organ music of Olivier Messiaen and César Franck, giants of the 20th and 19th centuries. In the meantime, the first film to be offered on RCO Cinema is Fugue State Films’ The Great Toccata, featuring the distinguished English organist and teacher, Daniel Moult, Head of Organ Studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and an RCO Trustee. The film can be viewed on RCO Cinema here until the end of August 2025. If you are too late reading this to view it on RCO Cinema, streaming and box-set purchase and options are available here.

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Sietze de Vries: Bach’s Missing Pages

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach’s Missing Pages: An Expanded Orgelbüchlein
Sietze de Vries, organ
Fugue State Films. DVD (223′) & 2CDs (73’+68′)

Hot on the heels of the extended, and now completed, Orgelbüchlein Project (which commissioned 118 new pieces to complete the chorales that Bach did not compose), comes this offering from Fugue State Films and Sietze de Vries. Over seven c30′ films (on one DVD) and two related CDs (which contain all the music from the films), Sietze de Vries plays all of the 45 chorales of Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. He then plays his own improvised chorale preludes in the style of Bach, using 45 of the 118 chorale melodies that Bach left titles for, but didn’t compose. In the videos, alongside his improvisations, he explores the philosophy of improvisation and shows how to improvise in the style of Bach, using the important historic organs in the Martinikerk, Groningen and the Petruskerk, Leens, both tucked away in the top right-hand corner of The Netherlands.

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Fugue State Films: Bach and Expression

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach and Expression
Fugue State Films: Organ Cinema
Film documentary.


Will Fraser’s Fugue State Films have built an impressive reputation for producing high-quality film documentaries on the world of organ music. Originally available in sumptuous box sets of DVDs and CDs and illustrative booklets, they have since expanded into digital access for their film. In the light of changing aspects of access to recorded content and the increase in streaming media, Fugue State Films, in conjunction with the Royal College of Organists have just announced an important new initiative, Organ Cinema. To celebrate and promote the launch, they are allowing free access to all their film documentaries for three days over this weekend, Friday 31 March to Monday 3 April. After that, a range of subscription options will be available.

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Sigfrid’s Unbeaten Tracks

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Sigfrid’s Unbeaten Tracks
Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Op 46 & 101
Graham Barber (organ)
Fugue State Films FSRCD016. 70’53

FSRCD016

Graham Barber has built a reputation for exploring some of the lesser-known byways of the organ world, particularly from the 19th and 20th centuries, and this recording is an excellent example of that focus. Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933) was a high profile organ composer in the UK and USA during the early years of the 20th century, so much so that the Organ Music Society of London arranged a ten-day festival of his music in 1930. He was, however, almost completely overlooked in his native Germany, where composers were taking a rather different path. A brief renaissance in the UK in the 1970s soon melted away, with the exception of the ‘March Triomphale’ on Nun danket alle Gott (Op65/59) which remains popular to this day, perhaps because it is a rare example of a German chorale melody that is also well-known in England, as ‘Now thank we all our God’.

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Fugue State Films: The English Organ

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

The English Organ
Daniel Moult, organ, Will Fraser, director 
Fugue State Films. 4 DVDs, 3 CDs, booklet

This extraordinary project is the result of a year-long tour of forty locations in England, the USA, New Zealand and Australia. The package includes four DVDs and three CDs, amounting to around ten hours of music from the early 16th century to the present day, together with an illustrated booklet with track listings and the specifications of all the organs. They are described and played by Daniel Moult, who also provides the commentary on the first DVD, which is a documentary in three 70′ parts on the development of the English organ. The following three DVDs and the three CDs provide further musical examples and, on the DVDs, further demonstrations of all the featured organs. Continue reading →

Maximum Reger

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Maximum Reger – The Last Giant
Fugue State Films. FSFDVD011. 6 DVD. c15h

Maximum Reger

Reger_Back_Cover

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian (Max) Reger (1873 -1916) is generally best known, if, perhaps, not always best liked, by organists. He is a bit of a love-or-hate composer, his extended and frequently dense organ pieces can be as hard to play as they, arguably, can be to listen to. As a breed, organists tend to concentrate on a composer’s organ music (with the possible exception of Bach) rather than exploring their music for other forces. Reger is one such, along with, for example, the contemporary, but longer-lived French composer Tournemire. If Reger is known at all to non-organists, it is probably through his chamber music. This extraordinary Fugue State Films box set of 6 DVDs, including a three-part documentary ‘The Last Giant’, aims to redress the balance of bringing Reger’s non-organ music and complex life story to organists, and the music of Reger in toto to non-organists who are not familiar with his music. For filmmaker and organist Will Fraser, of Fugue State Films, it is clearly a labour of love. Continue reading →

The Orgelbüchlein Project

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ 2 Comments

The Orgelbüchlein Project
A 21st-century completion of Bach’s Orgelbüchlein
Compiled and edited by William Whitehead
Volume 4: Christian Life and Conduct (Chorales 87–113)
152 pages  • ISMN 979-0-57701-498-2  • Softbound
Edition Peters EP73145

OB.jpg

The Orgelbüchlein Project is one of the most exciting and ambitious musical projects of recent years. Bach’s Orgelbüchlein was intended to be a set of 164 chorale preludes covering the whole liturgical year. It was started during Bach’s time in Weimar (1708-17) with a few additions after he arrived in Leipzig. In a tiny manuscript book, Bach wrote the titles of all 164 Lutheran chorales at the top of the pages, but only managed to complete settings of 46 of them. Most titles were allocated a single page, with some given more space. When he came to write out the chorale preludes, he occasionally ran out of space and packed in a few more bars at the bottom of the pages in the more compact (but old-fashioned) German tablature letter notation. The title page of the autograph copy (pictured below) notes Bach’s intention for the collection that “a beginning organist receives given instruction on performing a chorale in a multitude of ways while achieving mastery in the study of the pedal, since the chorales contained herein the pedal is treated entirely obbligato . . . that my fellow man may hone his skill.” The Orgelbüchlein Project is an international project, founded and curated by organist William Whitehead, to complete the Orgelbüchlein by commissioning composers to write settings for the 118 missing chorale preludes.

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