With stations number three and four of his journey through Bach’s organ landscapes, Jörg Halubek releases two more double albums. Both revolve around Bach’s experiences and impressions of a musical and personal nature, which he collected in northern Germany and which Jörg Halubek makes audible on the organs in Hamburg, Lüneburg and Altenbruch.
Bach performed on the main organ at St. Katharinen in Hamburg in 1720. Jörg Halubek interprets works of the Stylus Fantasticus with the Toccata in C, BWV 564 in the center on this very instrument, which has meanwhile been reconstructed and rebuilt by the Flentrop organ building company.
The Orgelbüchlein and the Organ Partitas can be heard on the organ of Lüneburg’s St. Johannis Church and the Klappmeyer organ in St. Nicolai at Altenbruch. The chorale partitas, in particular, “bear the clear traces of the North German environment, for example in the operatic-ariose elaborations with French ornaments or in the very individual virtuoso elaborations of the variations that the textual interpretations suggest for individual song stanzas,” according to Halubek. In the Choralbüchlein, which was written later in Weimar, Bach processes a characteristic motif of a chorale and forms specific sound images in each case. This approach, in turn, has its roots in the encounter with Georg Böhm in Lüneburg.
Both double albums are a further step of the multi-musician – Halubek plays the harpsichord and organ and leads the ensemble Il Gusto Barocco – on his journey not only through geographical landscapes but the entire organ cosmos of Johann Sebastian Bach. We can be curious about all further recordings, which will lead us through completely new landscapes and soundscapes in the coming years.
