Although his work with the Meiningen court orchestra brought him success, Max Reger pressed for change: such small towns, he wrote, with a “court” and such a preponderance of the military in social life, were the ruin of the artist. In March 1915 he announced to Karl Straube in almost euphoric terms: “Now begins the free, Jena style of Reger.” Plans for a new organ work in the grand style were part of it. By mid-May 1915 the engraver’s copy of Op. 135b was ready; like the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor Op. 29 before it, the work was dedicated to Richard Strauss. Reger then made numerous cuts — whether at Straube’s suggestion can no longer be established, so the abridged version in his own hand counts as his last will.
The première was reviewed warmly: the new work was significant, it was said, and showed the organ composer Reger at the highest level. Heinz Tiessen judged the Berlin performance more coolly, finding the Fantasia “slightly erratic” and never quite flowing. As in the fugue on B-A-C-H, Reger combines two opposites: a deeply melancholy theme moving in even crotchets, built from a semitone and a descending third, and a cheerfully ironic one in 12/8 with continuous semiquavers; at the close he unites them and ends with a majestic series of chords in a long ritardando. The same motif — descending minor second, descending third, descending minor second — also governs the Fantasia, which is made of short episodes: arpeggiated chords, intensifying sequences, lyrical lamenting motifs, dark webs of sound in the low register. The return of the opening arpeggiated chords rounds it off.
After moving to Jena, Reger worked essentially as a freelance composer, but continued to perform and was often heard on the organs of small Thuringian towns, frequently improvising. The Meiningen organist August König, a friend, described these improvisations as brooding and wistful, mighty in sound alongside the heartfelt and the tender, “but always crowned, often in fugal form, by a powerful and triumphal reliance on the chorale”. The Seven Pieces Op. 145 go back to such concerts. Four movements are attached to church festivals, three — Funeral Ode, Psalm of Thanksgiving and Victory Celebration — to events of the First World War, whose consequences Reger witnessed at close quarters: he had to watch his former Meiningen court orchestra being disbanded and played many concerts for unemployed musicians, soldiers and refugees. Contemporaries such as Hermann Keller dismissed the set as a minor work; Martin Schmeding counters that it uses the chorale in a completely different way from the great fantasies.
The Funeral Ode opens with the improvisatory contrast of descending chromatic lines and agitated chordal swings; an ostinato bass figure over which the manual parts rise forms the middle section, before a reprise-like transition leads to the chorale setting “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan”. The Psalm of Thanksgiving, dedicated to the German army, at first takes up the mood of the Funeral Ode, turns it towards the positive and issues in “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”. Christmas sets out from the gloom of “Das Volk, das im Finstern wandelt” and moves through the penitence of Advent to angels and manger with “Vom Himmel hoch” and “Stille Nacht”. The dense Passion is worked entirely from the chorale “Herzliebster Jesu”, while Easter sets loud jubilation against a chorale exposition pianissimo in the highest register. In Whitsun the chorale “Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott” at first remains suspended and is clouded chromatically; the opening chords of the Victory Celebration recall, in their syncopations, Reger’s last chorale fantasy “Halleluja! Gott zu loben”, before motifs from “Nun danket alle Gott” lead into the triumphant closing chorale.
Immediately after the sessions for the second volume, Martin Schmeding recorded these works on 24 and 25 April 2014 on the same Walcker organ in the Lutherkirche in Wiesbaden; here too Annette Fabriz was his registrant. The romantic, impressionistic colours of the instrument correspond to an interior designed entirely in Art Nouveau. That the church acquired a “sister instrument” opposite it in 1979, likewise with three manuals and with mechanical action, has proved a stroke of luck for the international organ competition for the Bach Prize of the city of Wiesbaden, held since 1977. The complete recording, which Schmeding made between 2014 and 2016 with the balance engineer Ingo Schmidt-Lucas on historic Sauer and Walcker organs, is based on the new editions of the scores published by Carus. This volume was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA).