Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Organ Works

The inescapable implication arises that this recording will include all of Mozart’s organ works. In reality, Mozart left us no genuine solo organ works, unless we count two minuscule Versets, K 154a. There are many eyewitness accounts of Mozart’s organ performances and of his consuming interest in the organs of cities he visited, but on those occasions he improvised, and he evidently never composed for the instrument per se (the 17 Organ Sonatas with instruments represent, of course, a distinctly separate body of literature).
Non of this diminishes the interest of these works recorded by Martin Sander or should detract from his impeccable performances. In fact, several are substantial masterworks from Mozart’s last year (Fantasias K 594 & 608 and Andante in F, K 617), as well as the magnificent, dark Adagio and Fugue in C minor, best known in its version for strings.
Sander is one of the finest young virtuoso organists of Europe. He is on the teaching staff of the conservatories in Heidelberg and Frankfurt. He plays here the Metzler organ in the Parish Church at Hopfgarten im Brixental (Tyrol), a recent and beautiful instrument of 44 stops. All of his registrations are listed in the brochure.
There is an unmistakable authority in his playing – a combination of rhythmic integrity, intensity of expression, clarity of articulation and absolute evenness and polish of technique.
Recorded sound is natural and luminous, and the notes are excellent.

One of the many frustrations for organists is that Mozart, the designator of the organ as the ‘King of Instruments’ and noted for his virtuoso performances during his life, left practically no organ music. But that has not stopped organists from delving amongst the pieces he wrote for mechanical organs and other keyboard works for music to perform under his name. This CD is typical of the result – a selection from the works edited by Martin Haselböck for organ including, of course, the two well-known and large-scale Fantasias in F minor (both written for a larger than usual barrel organ enclosed within a mausoleum for the Field Marshall Baron von Laudon in Vienna's ‘Müllersche Kunstgallerie’) and the equally popular (but more easily playable by humans) Adagio in C, written for the glass harmonica performances of the young Marianne Kirchgäßner. The choice of a modern organ is better than might at first seem, the recently built Metzler being broadly rooted in the Austrian late classical style, but with some later additions and influences, notably from the organ of the Silbermann brothers, whose organs Mozart knew well. A gently uneven temperament and a nicely musical flexibility to the winding add a touch of authenticity to the music, as does Martin Sander's clean and articulate playing. Some of the quieter registrations are of a style that was fairly well developed by Mozart's time, where several stops of the same pitch could he drawn together – the opening Adagio, for example, has no fewer than six 8' stops sounding all at once – a rich and sumptuous sound. The pleno pieces use a more traditionally baroque concept of registration, using variations on the principal ranks alone, with or without reeds. The concluding Fantasia in F minor, one of the grandest of Mozart's creations for any medium, is given an impressively forthright performance, contrasted with a nice tour of the gentler colours of the organ. I am not sure if there is a recording of either of these two Fantasias using the sorts of sounds that the original, and apparently fairly sizeable, barrel organ might have produced, but it would be an interesting project.