This programme is framed by Bach's Toccata & Fugue in F, well played on a 2-manual Metzler (2005). Other Bach works include the Magnificat and Trio Sonata in C, with Muffat's Toccata sexta, Pachelbel's Magnificat primi toni, Kerll's Toccata 1 and Froberger's Capriccio XII, the last two played on a 1766 organ at A423. Martin Neu plays the lively movements well, but the slower pieces (Muffat and BWV 529/2) are rather labored. There are some fine sounds, though, despite the inevitable change of pitch between the organs, and the general thesis of this CD is well conceived.

This SACD release from Audite formst he second volume of a collection focusing on composers, mostly documented by C.P.E. Bach, crowned with repertoire from Bach’s own output. Detailed programme notes give a background to all composers, and the research is precise. Tuning and temperaments have been taken into account, for the earlier works of Froberger and Kerll performed at the choir organ built by Blasius Bernauer in 1776.

Much of the music is recorded at 2005 Metzler organ in Stuttgart – Obertürkheim. This splendid organ is first heard in organo pleno for Bach’s Toccata in F, BWV 540. A compelling performance, although slightly lacking in forward movement.

Organist Martin Neu shows affinity with the style and his articulations are very convincing. The tempo choices in the more rapid toccatas of Muffat and Pachelbel are particularly fine together with stylish registrations (they can be found on line!) Neu always avoids the tendency to rush the toccatas. He really comes alive in the Trio Sonata no. 5 in C major, BWV 529, this being my favourite of his performances.

A pleasing touch is the addition of tenor Wilfried Rombach, whose shapely performance of the plainsong Magnificat verses sets Pachelbel’s Magnificat in context of its performance at the Nuremburg Church of St Sebald. Pachelbel’s final organ interpolation is lost and the addition of Bach’s own Fugue on the Magnificat, BWV 733, as the Gloria Patri is master stroke of programming.

Bach’s Fugue in F major, BWV 540, forms a dramatic conclusion to this most enjoyable recording, so thoughtfully conceived and executed. A few unsteady moments, but I thoroughly recommend this CD.

A happy star reigned over Cologne two autumns ago when violinist-turned-maestro Eivind Aadland recorded his cycle of Grieg symphonic works with the city's WDR orchestra. Aadland – his name, we are told, means 'land at the river' – explains in his notes to the project his own familial and geographical affinity with Grieg's affection for folk and dance music. In this collection of (mostly) string-orchestral arrangements of songs and piano originals actions certainly speak as loud as his words: the bite and bounce of the German orchestra's playing is remarkable for its apparent ethnicity.

This lack of the borrowed German romanticism that still cloaks much non-Scandinavian Grieg-playing – the composer portrayed as a kind of simplified Brahms with the Hungarian bits writ Nordic – does not indicate any lack of passion. The uberrestraint which characterised Ole Kristian Ruud's Bergen survey of this music is replaced here by a real evocation of the sadness – perhaps darkness would be a better word – behind Grieg's melodies and themes. A weighty and tense interpretation of From Holberg's Time gives the lie to the composer's none-too-serious apology for the work as 'periwig music' – a kind of 18th-century mask to his own emotions – and attains a dramatic level more suggestive of the plays and writing of Ludvik Holberg than most rivals. The song transcriptions, none more so than the Melody, Op 53 No 1 (retitled 'Norwegian'), are lent here an importance far beyond that of the salon encore material as which they are often scheduled.

In this series (three releases to come) or as a separate venture, Aadland and his adoptive orchestra must be let loose on as complete as possible a Peer Gynt. Almost singlehandedly these days he continues to make the case for Grieg as serious orchestral writer.

A couple of years back I much enjoyed Hideyo Harada's disc ofTchaikovsky and Rachmaninov (4/09). This release proves to be a far more mixed affair, She begins with the Wanderer Fantasy, revelling in the colouristic possibilities of its slow section, and proves more than equal to the work's considerable and frequently Wlpianistic technical demands, The final two sections prove more problematic: in the Presto her phrasing can become fussy, while her lack of a constant tempo is distracting. And, where the final fugue builds unassailably in the finest versions (Brendel and Richter would be my pianists ofchoice), Harada's acquires a dogged feel through overuse of slowings down, breaking up the momentum. So a mixed bag.
But it's in Schubert's final sonata that the real problems occur. It's a work that famously throws out the rulebook: tension, drama and brilliance are all rejected, replaced by writing that induces a kind of hypnotic state in the listener. At least, it does in a first-rate perfonnance, This is what makes Schubert's late music so &agiJe, for it lives or dies by its perfonner. And in order to have that sense of hypnosis, of suspended animation over the vast spans of this work, the pianist has to set up and maintain some kind of steady tempo in this instrunlental Winteneise. Otherwise Schubert the sleepwalker (to coin Brendel's phrase) wanders off into the forest. Harada is, alas, seemingly incapable of holding a speed for more than a bar at a time and her playing sOWlds tentative and lacking in line. She sOWlds as lost as we become during the next 22 minutes of Schubert's huge first movement. Though the Scherzo is not without moments of imaginative touch, it can't erase the memory of what has gone before. Urtless you have a strong masochistic sa-eal

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