David Ponsford is an organist, harpsichordist, musicologist and conductor, and an authority on keyboard music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was extremely fortunate to be able to study organ with Peter Hurford, Lionel Rogg and Piet Kee, and harpsichord with Kenneth Gilbert and Gustav Leonhardt. Since 2021, he has taught organ and harpsichord & organ continuo at the Royal Academy of Music, London. The present CD is volume 8 in the series ‘French Organ Music from the Golden Age’, performed by David Ponsford on French historic organs. This eight disc series emerged from David Ponsford's seminal book French Organ Music in the Reign of Louis XIV (Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 9781316620748) "This book is a must-have for any serious organist." Choir and Organ "Invaluable to understanding and appreciating its subject.' Early Music

This final instalment of the organ compositions of Axel Ruoff (born in Stuttgart in 1957) presents two starkly contrasted sides of his musical personality: three of them, for voice and organ, are concerned with the spiritual – two even addressing head-on the issue of death itself – and are thus solemn and hieratic, whereas the concluding work is a whimsical, tongue-in-cheek set of variations on ‘Happy Birthday’, written as a present for Ruoff’s publisher on his 80th birthday.

Jan Albert van Eykens Orgelwerke stehen in der Tradition der Orgelkompositionen von Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy und Robert Schumann. Seine drei großen Orgelsonaten liegen nun erstmals als Gesamteinspielung vor.Für diese hat die Organistin Ute Gremmel-Geuchen ein kostbares Instrument der Firma Richard Ibach aus Barmen (heute Wuppertal-Barmen) ausgewählt: die dreimanualige Orgel der Sint-Gertrudiskerk in Bergen op Zoom wurde 1863/64 erbaut und 2011 von der Firma Verschueren restauriert. Sie ist heute die größte noch erhaltene Orgel von dieser Firma! Interessant ist, dass der Niederländer van Eyken ab 1854 als Kirchenmusiker in Elberfeld (heute Wuppertal) wirkte und nachweislich mehrere Konzerte zu Einweihungen neuer Ibach-Orgeln gespielt hat: in Halver und in der Trierer Konstantinsbasilika. Insofern passen hier die Musik und das Instrument ideal zusammen, da die Orgeln der Firma Ibach ihm sehr vertraut gewesen sein müssen.

Pedro de Araújo (c. 1630-1707) is an important figure in Portuguese keyboard music of the late 17th century. His oeuvre consists of a total of 13 keyboard works, one of them with merely attributed authorship. These have come down to us through two manuscript sources in Portuguese collections: the Livro de obras de Orgaõ juntas pella coriosidade de Fr. Roque da Conceição, a source dated 1696, and the Livro de Obras de Órgão, a source compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries and originating in the Bouro Monastery (Braga). De Araújo’s output covers the genres that were in vogue in his day on the Iberian Peninsula (e.g. Batalha, Tento, Meio Registo, Fantasia) and which constituted the traditional repertoire of Iberian keyboard players in the service of ecclesiastical institutions.

This debut recording from Donal McCann on the organ of New College Oxford explores Bach's relationship with the music of his German and Italian contemporaries. Vivaldi's first major collection of concertos, L'Estro armonico, took Europe by storm in the early part of the 18th century, and this disc shows how Bach responded to this new and exotic Venetian voice. Bach's professional and personal life also entwined with his German contemporary, Johann Gottfried Walter, both men sharing an interest in transcription and moving in the professional world of Weimar court music.

St. Ignatius Brass Ensemble, Nancianne Parrella Kent Tritle

The organ in St. Oswalds church in Regensburg (Bavaria / South Germany) was inaugurated in 1750. This recording on the occasion of its 270th birthday documents its excellent sound. To this day, the instrument by Frantz Jacob Spath has been largely preserved in its original state and is an important testimony to the art of South German organ building. Frantz Jacob Spath was born in Regensburg in 1714 and died there on 23 July 1786. In Regensburg he built the organs of St. Oswald in 1750 and of the Church of the Holy Trinity in 1758. Of the latter, only the casing and some few pipes have been preserved. What made Spath famous, however, were his pianos, above all because of his invention of the tangent piano. The instrument, somewhere between a harpsichord and a fortepiano, was the reason for his companys international fame. To date, about 20 pianos of this type have been preserved in the most important instrument collections. Like other piano makers of his time, he, too, experimented: in 1770, he advertised his Clavecin dAmour, a combination instrument with strings and an organ stop (auto traversiere) on two manuals. Roman Emilius plays organ music of the 17th and 18th centuries, by Heinrich Scheidemann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Bhm, Johann Jacob De Neufville, Bernardo Pasquini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

This time the superb Harrison and Harrison Organ is under the spotlight in a recital with a theme of the damage to the city in World War 2 and the reconsiliation thereafter. The music is a mixture to reflect this and is recorded in stereo and 5.1 surround sound. The bonus features are a full demonstration of the organ, a demonstration of the two Chamber organs in the Cathedral and split screen talk through of the Cholley Rumba and registrations. A definite production not to be missed!

Despite only his book of ‘Magnificats’ and these 18 compositions for organ having come down to us today, Sebastiaìn Aguilera de Heredia (1561–1627) is noted in the history of Spanish music as one of the great figures in the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, comparable to his Dutch contemporary Sweelinck. His style reflects the polyphonic tradition of the Spanish Renaissance along with the elements of an incipient Baroque, bridging that of Cabezoìn (Renaissance) and Correa (Baroque).