Bach: Sonatas
Plamena Nikitassova & Peter Waldner
Musik Museum 46, CD13045. 74’30
This recording is one of a series produced by the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck. Although the title is just ‘Sonaten’, the programme is actually a selection of Violin Sonatas, three with obligato harpsichord (BWV 1016, 1017 & 1019), one for solo violin (BWV 1005) and an arrangement, possibly by Bach, of the first movement of that solo sonata for harpsichord (BWV 968).
Life Pictures: Scenes of the Life of King Christian IV
English, Dutch, German & Spanish organ works before, around & after 1600
Peter Waldner
1610 Compenius Organ, Frederiksborg Castle Church, Denmark
Tastenfreuden 8. 79’44
The 1610 organ in the rear gallery of the Frederiksborg Castle Chapel is one of the most important surviving historic instruments. It was originally built by Esaias Compenius for the summer residence of Duke Heinrich Julius, Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, with Michael Praetorius, organist and Kapellmeister of the Duke’s castle chapel, as the consultant. Compenius and Praetorius almost certainly met during the famous 1596 Gröningen Castle Organ Congress, an event which gathered 53 of the finest organists to test the new David Beck organ in Duke Heinrich Julius’s castle chapel of Gröningen. Although much smaller than the Gröningen organ, the Compenius organ had many similarities, not least a demonstration of the wide range of tone colours that could be produced, unusually, in the case of the Compenius organ, with all 1001 pipes (over 27 stops) made of wood. After Heinrich Julius’s death, his wife gave the organ to her brother, the music-loving Danish King Christian IV, where it was installed in the Frederiksborg castle by Compenius in 1617.
Apparatus musico-organisticus
Baroque organ works from Tyrolean sources
Peter Waldner
Musikmuseum 51 MMCD 13050. 65’29
In this recording, the prolific Innsbruck-based organist Peter Waldner plays two historic organs in the western part of the Italian South Tirol close to, and just over, the border with Switzerland. The choice of organs, and to an extent the music, is focussed on that region, not least because the nearby Benedictine Abbey of Marienberg contains the Tyrol’s only known copy of Georg Muffat’s 1690/1721 Apparatus musico-organisticus which forms the bulk of the CD.
Stile Nuovo
Weihnachtsmusik Von Christoph Sätzl & Marienvesper im Dom zu Brixen 1641
Odhecaton, La Venexiana, Prishna
Musikmuseum 41, CD13040. 2CDs 59’12+57’57
I have been sent several CDs published by the Music Museum of the Tiroler Landesmuseen in Innsbruck. One of which is this set of two CDs, the first of which is of early Baroque Christmas motets from Tyrol and Italy (recorded in 2016) with a second CD (recorded, live, in 2000) of Marienvespers music from Brixen Cathedral as might have been heard around 1641. The two CDs do not seem to be related, although it is not clear if this is a re-release of earlier published recordings.
Bachs Mentoren (Bach’s Mentors)
Peter Waldner
Tastenfreuden 4. 75’16
This recording was self-pubished by Peter Waldner in 2012 as part of his Tastenfreuden series but has only just been sent to me for review. It includes music by the North German composers Buxtehude, Reincken and Bõhm, noted as Bach’s “mentors”, played on harpsichord, octave spinet and muselar. The word “mentor” might a little wide of the mark, as there is no evidence any of these three musicians actually taught the young Bach, although he was certainly strongly influenced by them in his early years.
Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews + 