Bach, J S: Chorale Preludes III, BWV651-668 'Leipzig Chorales' ('The Great Eighteen')

Lorenzo Ghielmi at the Ahrend organ of the Basillica of the San Simpliciano in Milan.

The C minor Passacaglia and Fugue is one of the great masterpieces for the instrument and one which inspired countless responses from composers great and lesser. So it's all the more astonishing to think that Bach wrote it while still a twenty‐something hireling in Weimar, where his Kapell meistership to the Duke ended badly with the composer being clapped in irons for touting his availability for other jobs, frustrated as his ambition was by the restrictions of the position.

He had, however, managed to overhaul the organ of the court chapel in 1712–13, by collaborating with an organ‐builder friend by the name of Trebs; both men had had plenty of experience upgrading instruments elsewhere, and it showed both in the colourful specification of the new instrument and the music that Bach was thereby able to write for it – none more spectacular than the spectrum of registers which the successive variations of the Passacaglia seem to cry out for.

Bach also wrote plenty of 'bread and butter' chorales while in Weimar, of course, and later elaborated them, as was his wont, in Leipzig; here's a rare chance to hear the original versions. Manuel Tomadin is Young ECHO Organist of the Year 2012, having won the ninth Internationaal Schnitger Orgelconcours during the Orgelfestival Holland in June 2011 in Alkmaar. He was born in 1977 but has already made recordings on various instruments of historical importance; he enjoys a high reputation among the organ fraternity.

Ullrich Böhme, organist at St Thomas Leipzig, plays the “Achtzehn Leipziger Choräle” at the Bach organ at St Thomas. The Marburg organ builder Gerald Woehl erected the instrument on the Northern gallery, opposite the Bach window, in the Bach year 2000. It is modelled on the organ building techniques and organ sound of the eighteenth century.

Ullrich Böhme took up on this in his recording of the chorale cycle. While maintaining the clarity of the musical structure, its impact of sound is not to be mitigated by an all too timid registration. Böhme decided to precede the chorale arrangements with performances of the actual chorales for which he consciously chose another, no less historical instrument. In order to do so, he set off to Störmthal, situated 20 kilometres southeast of Leipzig.

The village of five-hundred inhabitants keeps in its church one of Saxony’s greatest organ treasures: the Hildebrandt organ of 1723, which remains in its almost original form up to the present day. On 2 November of that year, it was inaugurated by Johann Sebastian Bach himself, after he had previously signed the report and given his approval of the instrument. On that same Sunday of 1723, Bach directed the debut performance of his cantata “Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest” (BWV 194).

Ullrich Böhme consciously places the original chorales which form the basis of the large-scale arrangements of the “Achtzehn Choräle” into the context of a village church, and thereby juxtaposes the different musical forms in a meaningful way, lucidly claiming that – regardless of the actual place of performance – both works are essentially the same: liturgical music; an expression of faith at St Thomas Leipzig as much as at the Dorfkirche at Störmthal.

The “Leipzig Chorales” number among the essential repertoire of each and every organist. The interpretation of them by the young Canadian organist Craig Frederick Humber on the famous Silbermann organ in St.Peter’s Church in Freiberg heard on these two CDs demonstrates a fascinating musical heritage.

Played on Silbermann organs.