Buxtehude: Praeludium in E Minor, BuxWV142

This latest addition to Christopher Herrick’s acclaimed Buxtehude catalogue is performed on the magnificent Organ of Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge.

Everything heard on this disc was composed over three-hundred years ago when printed music was a rarity and organists were required to be highly proficient in the art of improvisation. Certainly none of Buxtehude’s organ works was printed in his lifetime, and it was not until 1875 that they first became available. Herrick’s communication is exceptional in these stimulating performances and his inspired interpretations are so vivid that they appear improvisatory in their approach.

This recording offers an unusual selection of Dietrich Buxtehude’s vocal music performed by 2010 Grammy® Award winning ensemble Theatre of Voices conducted by Paul Hillier. Among these rarely heard works with texts in Swedish and Latin, we find cantatas in the form of virtuoso concertos, as well as arias and chorale settings and Buxtehude’s only work in the stile antico, the Missa alla brevis.

A natural choice of recording venue for Hillier and his team was St. Mary’s Church in Elsinore where Buxtehude was employed as an organist in 1660-68. Bine Bryndorf is the guest organist and plays the authentic (restored) ‘Buxtehude organ’.

Canadian-born Michael Unger is a multi-award winner, including First Prize in the 2008 Sixth International Organ Competition Musashino-Tokyo, Japan, and First and Audience Prize in the 2008 American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artists Competition.

This is the tenth recording in the outstanding series of the complete works of Dieterich Buxtehude by Ton Koopman and the fifth and final part of the organ works. It presents a selection which contains the remainder of Buxtehude’s organ works of the two major categories, free and chorale-based compositions, alongside the complete organ works of Nicolaus Bruhns (1665-1697). Bruhns was Buxtehude’s most gifted pupil and was an important figure in the development of Buxtehude’s style of composition. Buxtehude’s organ works are his most significant contribution to the history of music. They consist of a comprehensive body of 90 compositions, of which more than half are chorale settings.

The organ featured on this 2-CD set is one of only two surviving organs by Erasmus Bielfeldt and has been restored on the basis of the great organ building art of the baroque in 1990 by Ahrend.

Ton Koopman is one of the world’s foremost early music keyboard specialists and directors. His recording of the complete Bach Cantatas received worldwide acclaim. He is president of the International Dieterich Buxtehude Society and one of the world’s leading authorities on his 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.