The repudiation of an extra-musical programme, the refusal of applied effects and the appeal to Johann Sebastian Bach are among the fundamental constants of Max Reger’s work. His teacher Hugo Riemann praised the new opus in sparing words: it would “give some people a headache but is good”; Reger himself set out his principles at greater length: “unyielding logic with regard to movements; soundness of voice-leading”, the avoidance of all sentimental moments and, instead of playing around with sound effects, “a purposeful, real composing for organ”. He made no distinction between the chorale fantasies with their quasi-programmatic textual basis and the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor Op. 29: for him music was always absolute and comprehensible according to its own laws. In April 1900 Karl Straube was among the first to point out the inner relationship to Bach’s Fantasy and Fugue in G minor BWV 542, which Reger had arranged for piano four hands in 1896: the same gesture in the expressive demisemiquaver runs, strictly polyphonic quieter interpolations as a counterpoint to the eruptive main sections, the steadily descending pedal scale against rising chromatic passages. The work, completed in the autumn of 1898, is dedicated to Richard Strauss, who had long encouraged Reger and had given him a contact with the publishers Aibl and Forberg; in order not to compete with him, Reger chose a field far removed from Strauss’s own composing.
The four pieces with which the third book of the Monologues (“Twelve Pieces”) for Organ Op. 63 closes the collection — Toccata, Fugue, Canon and Scherzo — were written in 1902, shortly before the Variations Op. 73. It was a very particular time in Reger’s life: after a long courtship he had managed to persuade Elsa von Bagenski to marry him; that a Catholic married a divorced Protestant led to his excommunication. A year later, in the late summer of 1903, while on holiday in Berchtesgaden, he wrote the work that Martin Schmeding calls in the booklet a high point of Reger’s organ output.
When Karl Straube told him that he intended to play the Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme in F sharp minor for Organ Op. 73 at both the beginning and the end of a concert in the Thomaskirche, so that the audience might understand it better, Reger reacted almost with horror: “believe me, if you play Op. 73 twice, great cries of rage will resound, from which people will run away!” Straube carried out his plan all the same, and it addressed the crux of the matter: the work ranks among Reger’s most wonderful compositions, yet even experienced concertgoers rarely grasp it at first hearing. With it Reger opened the series of his great variation cycles, continued in the Bach (Op. 81), Beethoven (Op. 86), Hiller (Op. 100), Mozart (Op. 132) and Telemann (Op. 134) variations. It is dedicated to Straube in recollection of his concert at Basel Minster on 14 June 1903; he had asked for a piece without reference to Protestant chorales, so that he could also play it in predominantly Catholic cities. Asked about a possible content, Reger answered: “the work itself was born in a rather melancholic mood: the resignation of the theme tells everything; the theme’s melancholy third bar plays a major rôle in the work.” Its interval sequence second–third becomes the constituent element of the entire piece.
The Introduzione already anticipates a basic principle of the variations: its three motifs — falling tritone, demisemiquaver movement, sighing motif — are split off, inverted and worked over in ever-new waves, joined by the anticipated motif from the third bar of the theme; again and again Reger returns to the recitative-like opening motif before the motifs gather into motoric, sonic and harmonic climaxes. The thirteen variations combine different techniques: the first three retain the basic structure and length of the theme but disperse the melody ever more into figurative elements, as far as monophony; Variation 4 rearranges the motifs and expands them, Variation 5 develops the theme line by line in an almost Baroque manner, first in the bass, then partly figured in the soprano. The sixth variation, governed by the hitherto omitted second-third motif, moves from a pensive beginning to an extreme flare-up; the following three demand the fastest manual changes, chains of chords and rapid runs, while the theme appears only in passing, in Variation 8 as semiquavers in the pedal. Variation 11 stands in G major, a quasi-Neapolitan key, and creates a strangely hovering atmosphere; Variation 12 returns formally to the structure of the theme while taking up, in its motoric writing, the chordal clusters of the preceding variations. The Fugue, whose length corresponds to that of the introduction, again has a tripartite theme. After a development expanding to four parts a central counterpoint is added, in whose highest notes the second-third motif can once more be recognised; in the middle section the theme is split into its individual parts before the closing section brings an intensification in organo pleno.
For Max Reger, Johann Sebastian Bach was the “beginning and end” of all music, and so Bach’s place of work was of particular importance to him. From 1903 his long-standing friend Karl Straube also held office at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, at the Sauer organ of 1889; in 1908 he had it enlarged from 63 to 88 stops. Christian Scheffler (Sieversdorf) renovated the instrument in 1993 and 2005. Martin Schmeding, who in the booklet singles out its comprehensive fundus of stops as ideal for Reger’s organ music, recorded the three works there from 17 to 20 July 2016. The recording was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA).