Scheidemann: Toccata in G

The massed voices of the 140-strong National Youth Choir revel in the magnificently soaring lines of Schütz’s sacred music, complemented by John Kitchen’s contributions on the powerful Rieger organ of St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh. Revered by his contemporaries as the ‘Orpheus of our time’, Schütz would never have heard his music performed by forces such as these and on such a scale – surely he would have been a strong advocate of this astounding aural experience. Kitchen’s solo contributions contextualise the choral music with organ works by Samuel Scheidt and other contemporaries of Schütz.

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.