Bach, J S: Chorale Prelude BWV743 'Ach, was ist doch unser Leben'

This second recording from the critically-acclaimed Svyati Duo features more original works for the unusual combination of cello and organ, together with a selection of transcriptions.

Three first recordings, including a new work commissioned by the Svyati Duo from distinguished UK composer, Timothy Salter.

Volume 5 of Margaret Phillips’ on-going and critically-acclaimed cycle of the complete organ works of JS Bach, featuring the best of historic instruments.

Two CD set at ‘two-for-one’ price.

This volume includes the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV565, the ‘Dorian’ Toccata and Fugue BWV 538 and a varied selection of large- and small-scale works which form a satisfying self-contained recital of Bach’s organ music on each of the two CDs.

Later, when Johann Sebastian Bach was a choir boy at St. Michael´s School in Lüneburg, he will certainly have been strongly influenced by Georg Böhm, the organist at the towns Church of St. John, and Bach at the same time made frequent trips to Hamburg, where he could hear Johann Adam Reincken. In 1705 finally, Bach made his pilgrimage to the Church of St. Mary in Lübeck to see Dietrich Buxtehude, who towered above all other organists of his day, and with whom Bach spent quiet some time studying the masters works. Accordingly, Bach´s early works for organ clearly show the influence of Dietrich Buxtehude both in the free works as well as those wedded to a chorale, and that of Georg Böhm, especially in the chorale partitas. Some of these early compositions are also heard on this CD.