Alongside the chorale fantasies, Reger turned at the beginning of his Weiden years to another inherited form: the sonata. He was well aware of the difficulty. To Adalbert Lindner he called it impossible to transfer the old piano sonata form to the organ, and to his early performer Arthur Egidi he wrote: don’t let the title “Sonata” frighten you; it is not a sonata form. The title here is only a collective one. Like Josef Rheinberger, Reger interrupts the fantasy-and-fugue design with an intermezzo that begins in the manner of a song without words, rises to violent outbursts in its middle section and returns to the song; the movements are linked motivically, the second subject of the first movement returning as the bass of that outburst.
The finale is, as already in the first Suite in E minor Op. 16, a passacaglia. The engraved draft carries the note Weiden, 3 March 1899; the sonata is dedicated to Liszt’s pupil Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg. A copy went to Rheinberger with the request for a favourable glance at this, my latest crime against harmony and counterpoint. That the work would be hard to open up Reger admitted himself: it is extremely hard to make this work properly “edible”. After the premiere on 8 April 1899 he composed five further passacaglia variations for Karl Straube, which never reached the printed edition but round out the form — this recording includes them.
The Monologues, twelve pieces for organ Op. 63 of 1902, were written at a special time: after long courtship Reger had persuaded Elsa von Bagenski to marry him. Knowing his fragile state, she wrote to him: but Max, will I then really, and in the long term, be able to shoo away your soul’s gloomy moods? Unlike the contemporaneous collections of character pieces, these twelve carry one binding title — images of his eventful inner life. The publisher advertised them with the claim that the works would place no technical demands on the player; in fact they go far beyond that in length, difficulty and complexity.
Vol. 14 gathers the first two books: Prelude, Fugue, Canzone and Capriccio, then Introduction, Passacaglia, Ave Maria and Fantasy. Players and audiences received the Introduction and Passacaglia enthusiastically; Karl Straube placed them in one of his inaugural concerts at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Of the Heidelberg performance Fritz Stein wrote: a piece whose force is shattering, whose profound tragedy provokes fright and trembling.
The recording was made in January 2016 on the Wilhelm Sauer organ of Berlin Cathedral, an instrument from Reger’s own time. The complete edition was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards.