Interpretative symbiosis on organ

Abstract

Several recent CDs featuring music from European Baroque traditions, played on superb organs, here illustrate the fundamental links between instrument, composition and performance practice. Recordings are especially vital for organists, who have a vast legacy of historical instruments from which to learn first hand about convincing playing styles for early music. In many cases the best way to demonstrate the application of various performance techniques is to document them with a recording made on a surviving organ in an acoustical setting; together these elements may reflect the appropriate sound aesthetic of the repertory. What is most striking about the recordings reviewed here is the strong symbiosis between the interpretations—each organist's choice of tempo and rhythmic flexibility, articulation, ornamentation—and the instruments, vividly bringing the music off the page and into our living rooms. It is heartening that well-informed and dedicated organists are making recordings of this calibre, enabling early music enthusiasts to experience, perhaps for the first time, performances where the interpretative style is directly inspired by the instrument's capabilities.