Helena Thomson | Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews +

Hieronymus Praetorius: Missa Tulerunt Dominum Meum
Siglo de Oro, Patrick Allies
Delphian DCD34208. 59’27

Hieronymus Praetorius is one of the finest, but one of the least-known, of the magnificent sequence of North German organist-composers centred around Hamburg during the 17th century. He represents what to many is a surprising reflection of the state of music in Hamburg in the years before the influence of the Amsterdam-trained generation of Sweelinck pupils. These included Hieronymus’s own sons, Jacob II and Johannes, together with Samual Scheidt, Heinrich Scheidemann and Melchior Schildt. In the ‘family-business’ world of German organists, Hieronymus was the son of an organist (Jacob I) and eventually replaced him as organist of the Hamburg Jacobikirche. Continue reading →

Bach in Advent
David Titterington, Siglo de Oro, Patrick Allies
Bach Clavier-Übung III ‘German Organ Mass’
St John’s, Smith Square. 21 December 2017

During the three-week run-up to Christmas, St John’s, Smith Sq has been running a series of free early evening organ recital, given by the curator of the SJSS Klais organ, David Titterington, and focussed on the music of JS Bach. The two I had intended to hear before evening concerts were both cancelled, but I did catch the evening concert that concluded the series. This was a performance of the major pieces from Bach’s Clavier-Übung III, occasionally referred to this Bach’s monumental work, the largest single collection of his organ music. It was published in 1739 and includes a wide range of musical style, in the form of chorale preludes (in pairs, with larger pedaliter and smaller manualiter arrangement) based on the German Lutheran Mass, together with four duets, the whole enclosed with a large-scale Praeludium and Fugue – the latter known in the UK as the ‘St Anne Fugue’ after the hymn tune which the theme resembles. Continue reading →