Gerd Zacher places two generations of Romantic organ music in dialogue. Mendelssohn’s six Sonatas op. 65 can be heard as a connected cycle. Their unusual combinations of sonata form, chorale, fugue and variation extend beyond familiar generic boundaries. Zacher’s approach, explained in the booklet, makes the relationships among the movements as comprehensible as their contrasts.
The second SACD follows with Brahms’s Fugue in A-flat minor WoO 8 and the Eleven Chorale Preludes op. 122. In these late pieces, familiar church songs appear in ever-changing harmonic and contrapuntal light. Zacher performs the Chorale Preludes in the order of the manuscript; the shifting gestures of intimacy, expectation and farewell thereby gain an individual dramaturgy.
The listed E. F. Walcker organ of 1900 in the Protestant church of Essen-Werden, with pneumatic action, is more than a historic setting. Its blendable stop colours give Mendelssohn’s broad architecture and Brahms’s subtle gradations a shared tonal home. The recording on two Hybrid SACDs offers stereo and 5.1 surround.