’To record Bach’s complete works for organ on historic instruments has always been a dream for me. When I began my first series of releases in 1960, all but a handful of medium-sized instruments had not yet been sufficiently well restored to do justice to the immense diversity of the Thomaskanto’s works, with the results that I opted for copies of Baroque instruments. Developments in performing practice encouraged me to record a second complete cycle on the same type of instrument in 1978.
Hand in hand with developments to the manuals went notable improvements in techniques of restoring organs. There was also a growing awareness of the value of each county’s musical heritage, while organ builders anxious to achieve genuine authenticity evolved increasingly sophisticated techniques to restore our historic organs to their original state.
And so it came about that in 1986 I was persuaded to record an anthology of Bach’s major works on the Martinikerk organ in Groningen, an instrument that had been superbly restored by Jürgen Ahrend. This recording was followed by two others devoted to Bach’s works from the period 1744-1748.
It was then that I saw the opportunity to realise my long-standing dream, not least because the frontier with East Germany was about to open up, granting access to the uniquely valuable Silbermann organs.
Hand in hand with developments to the manuals went notable improvements in techniques of restoring organs. There was also a growing awareness of the value of each county’s musical heritage, while organ builders anxious to achieve genuine authenticity evolved increasingly sophisticated techniques to restore our historic organs to their original state.
And so it came about that in 1986 I was persuaded to record an anthology of Bach’s major works on the Martinikerk organ in Groningen, an instrument that had been superbly restored by Jürgen Ahrend. This recording was followed by two others devoted to Bach’s works from the period 1744-1748.
It was then that I saw the opportunity to realise my long-standing dream, not least because the frontier with East Germany was about to open up, granting access to the uniquely valuable Silbermann organs.
