Buxtehude, Bach, G. Böhm, J.A. Reinecken
Agnes Luchterhandt (organ)
Thiemo Janssen (organ)
Organ Twosome
Agnes Luchterhandt and Thiemo Janssen earned a place on the Quarterly Listing of the German Record Critics with their very first SACD. Vol. 2 now follows on the world-famous Arp Schnitger organ in St. Ludgeri’s Church in Norden. This husband-and-wife duo presents the marvelously beautiful tone colors of East Friesland’s most magnificent organ with big sound in selections by Bach and his Northern German models Böhm, Buxtehude, and Reincken.
Northern Lights
From his youth Johann Sebastian Bach was familiar with the Northern German organ tradition. Already as a pupil of Georg Böhm in Lüneburg, it was his wish to play one of the Arp Schnitger organs, which even then were famed far and wide. It is not known whether this wish took him to Norden. In any case, he repeatedly visited Hamburg, where he listened to Adam Reincken at St. Katharine’s Church. He was so fascinated by the grand Schnitger organ in the same
city’s Church of St. Jacobi that he later applied for the organist’s post there.
Heavenly Spheres
Bach’s chorales and large-format toccatas are especially enhanced by the expressive register sound and modified mean-tone temperament of the Schnitger organ in Norden. The lavishly rich sound spectrum formed by the Hauptwerk, Rückpositiv, Pedalwerk, and Oberwerk lends these compositions an extremely vivid effect. The phenomenal listening pleasure is heightened even more by the special recording technique: the listener is transported very deliberately from the earthbound, immediate sound of the church transept to the sublime room sound and heavenly spheres of the Gothic choir. A 3-D sound feast for all the senses!