Reger: Organ Works, Vol. 1 - Weinberger

CPO 777 717-2
Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid
Classical - Instrumental
Reger: Phantasie und Fuge, Op. 46; Suite, Op. 16; Sonatas Opp. 33 & 60; 12 Stücke, Op. 80
Gerhard Weinberger, organ
Gerhard Weinberger & Max Reger
Following the great success of our new complete recording – and the most comprehensive one ever – of Bach’s organ works (German Record Critics Prize for the Year 2009!), Gerhard Weinberger now turns to a new edition featuring the organ compositions of Max Reger in performances on selected magnificent organs surviving from the Reger period. Reger would compose an overall oeuvre for the organ enabling this instrument to gain new prestige. Vol. 1 contains works offering eloquent testimony to Reger’s veneration of Bach. For this organist, pianist, conductor, and composer who was born in 1873 and died in 1916, Bach was the “beginning and end of all music” and even “music’s God the Father.” It is thus not surprising that analytic, compositional, and interpretive occupation with the music of Leipzig’s Thomaskantor formed an important point of orientation in Reger’s life. In the case of a personality of Reger’s rank, the overall result amounted to more than mere stylistic copies. He did indeed succeed in developing his own idiom, a musical language that might best be described as a combination involving complex counterpoint – Reger once spoke of a “hell of counterpoint” in view of a planned string quartet – and advanced harmony. However, it would be entirely off the mark to limit Reger to his Bach reception and recourse to models from baroque music; the part of his oeuvre obliged to the traditions of the nineteenth century such as piano and chamber music, works for orchestra, songs, and other genres is simply too extensive and significant.
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