Search - Johannes Brahms, Hermann Schäffer :: Johannes Brahms: Complete Organ Works

HERZLICH TUT MICH ERFREUEN

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 12/12/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Literally, that's `Heartily doth it rejoice me'. To say the least, rejoicing is not the predominant tone of Brahms's organ compositions, but great music is great music and I for one am never saddened by it. There are 15 pieces in total. Four date from the composer's 20's, three prelude-and-fugue combinations plus the solitary fugue in A flat minor, a highly chromatic, introverted and personal work, and none of these bear opus-numbers, although he thought well enough of some of them to dedicate them to his adored Clara Schumann. The other 11 are the set of chorale preludes opus 122 that were his last published work. Of the 11, 2 are based on the chorale `Herzlich tut mich verlangen' (Heartily doth it sadden me), and 2 others, including the last of all, are on `O Welt, ich muss dich lassen' (O world I must leave thee). He signs off this piece `June 96', and he died in March or April of the following year, a month short of his 64th birthday, so it may really have been his last composition.



The disc does not come cheap, and it does not amount to a great deal of music, but for myself I would not have wanted any fillers, probably not even any Bach. This music shows some particular sides of a many-sided musical colossus who is almost over-familiar to us in some respects and hardly known in certain others. The early works have fewer shadows than the late ones, but the tone is predominantly solemn. They are also bigger and less intimate in style, and it seems to me that Hermann Schaeffer handles them in general rather better. What I would have wanted from him in the late set is a little more contrast and even a little more vigour, which he could have afforded without falsifying the style of the works. I felt this most in Herzlich tut mich erfreuen itself, which is too slow. It can go with far more life and extroversion than this. I was also not entirely convinced by his registration. The organ of the Christuskirch in Mannheim, dating from 1911, boasts 73 manual stops and 21 pedals, so he had plenty of choice. The bass entries in the fugues are a little bit timid for my own taste, and you may find as I did that you have to turn up the volume more than you might have liked in certain of the op 122 preludes in order to get much audibility in the quieter registers. Both the lovely Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen and the following Herzlich tut mich verlangen are in slight danger of dying on the doorstep, and the double echo effect in the final number is faint rather than remote as I would have preferred.



Nonetheless these are sensitive and idiomatic readings of music that I don't get many opportunities to hear, and Schaeffer has a sound instinct for the composer's style. In general, even in the orchestral works, to try to hear Brahms with reference to Beethoven is a hindrance not a help in understanding him. The true point of reference for his inspiration is Bach, and after Bach Schubert, bearing in mind of course that he was an original genius of the order of any of these.



The recorded quality is clear, and this is a disc that means a lot to me, reservations or no."