Organ Gloriosa

Johannes Bach (1685-1750) Fantasia et Fuga in G Minor BWV 542 "The Great"
Georg Muffat (1653-1704) Passacaglia for Organ in G Minor Apparatus musico-organisticus Part IV
b(1714-1788) Sonata No.IV, Wq 70,4 - H 85 3.
Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770-1846) Flute Concerto for Organ Op. 55
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) Organ Sonata No. IV in B Flat Minor, Op. 65

Ulrike Northoff at a Castle-Concert in the Castle Church of Bad Homburg

KuK 41

If you haven't come across the CDs of kuk-verlagsanstalt and their website, you have a treat in store. Mostly, we have reviewed their concert performances of Handel oratorios etc, and this is the first instumental solo recital that has come to me. For deatils, do go to the web page above, which makes factual reporting here superfluous.

Just to say that this has been one of the most welcome of our Christmassy offering, not that it is characterised as such. The organ at the Castle Church of Bad Homburg has been restored to its late 18th C glory. Ulrike Northoff has designed a perfect programme to show it off, a sequence from Bach to Mendelssohn, with lesser know works of Muffat, CPE Bach and Rinck on the way. Each piece demonstrates some gorgeous stops in an ambience which has proved ideal for recording, with great clarity but not without just sufficient warmth.

It is very much a joint labour of love, with some poetic fantasy in the descriptive prose (the sound of the organ seeps down into the crypt, so Grimminger & Kindler think of the recital as a tribute to the Prince and his forbears and descendants, comprising a silent appreciative audience below...) What they don't tell us is anything about the music, so you too may have to look up Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770-1846), whose organ concerto for the flute stops is an unusual gem.

Warmly recommended.

Peter Grahame Woolf