Buxtehude: Ciacona in E minor, BuxWV160

This ‘themed’ programme by Da Pacem derives from a series of concerts devoted to Bach’s infamous journey on foot to hear Buxtehude play. Did he have leave of absence from his employers? Did the four month absence change his style for ever?

Buxtehude achieved a staggering synthesis of the polyphonic, numerical and rhetorical traditions of his predecessors with a very personal poetry, taking care to make his music accessible to everyone, from the specialist to the layman. It is not surprising that Bach took him as his model.

Masaaki Suzuki here performs a varied selection of Buxtehude’s organ works ranging from brief chorale preludes to the magnificent Te Deum Laudamus and the celebrated Ciaccona in E minor. Although he is most widely known for his on-going, highly praised series of Bach’s cantatas on BIS, Masaaki Suzuki in fact began his professional career as a church organist at the age of twelve, later studying the instrument both in Tokyo and in Amsterdam.

Christopher Herrick’s acclaimed series of Buxtehude’s complete organ works continues with a selection of his praeludia, toccatas, ostinato works, and canzonas, interspersed with chorale preludes and variations. For this disc he turns to the magnificent organ of Trondheim Cathedral in Norway, originally built by Joachim Wagner (1690–1749) and restored to its former baroque glory in 1994.

Highlights from this disc include the brilliant, flamboyant Praeludium in G minor, BuxWV149. Here, as so often in Buxtehude’s organ works, one can picture an organist seated at a console completely free of music and giving his imagination full rein. Also, the Chorale Fantasia on Te Deum, BuxWV218, the only plainsong-based work on this CD and one of Buxtehude’s longest and grandest works for organ.

A compendium of the most important influences on JS Bach, as listed in his obituary.

A kaleidoscopic survey of the development of early German Baroque music.

A great opportunity to hear a new recording of the magnificent Bernard Aubertin organ of Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, Paris. Built in 2004 in German Baroque style.

Played by Margaret Phillips – one of the UK’s most distinguished concert organists and a world-renowned expert in 18th century keyboard music.

An acknowledged expert in the field of early keyboard instruments and music, Douglas Hollick was the first Organ Scholar at Hull University, studying with Peter Hurford. He subsequently studied in Paris with Marie-Claire Alain, and in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt. He has played widely in the UK and abroad, and teaches in Cambridge and at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

With an international reputation, and with many accolades from critics and scholars alike, Douglas Hollick was awarded a year 2000 Churchill Fellowship to visit North Germany and Denmark to research the organs and other keyboard instruments from the period of Buxtehude and the young J S Bach. Endlessly curious about the little known music of the 17th and 18th centuries, he has recorded music of the enigmatic French composer Christophe Moyreau (see Riverrun RVRCD 60), a CD entitled ‘Buxtehude, master and pupil’ (RVRCD 67) which places the great North German master in the context of some of his teachers and pupils, and a programme of music from the period of the French Revolution for harpsichord, square piano and organ (RVRCD 71).

Douglas Hollick made harpsichords professionally for some fifteen years up to 1990, and has also had some experience in organ building and early piano restoration. It is a 1986 harpsichord of his, based on Ruckers, which is used on this recording.