You'll need your latest smartphone if you want to understand anything about the latest albums by the wacky German organist Jörg Halubek. Under the GPS coordinates of the places and instruments frequented by Bach, we see Halubek, on the covers of his Bach complete works undertaken since 2019 for the Berlin Classics label, armed with a large black umbrella under a radiant sky, walking around with a cheerful face. Of course, the name Halubek is already a bit of an in-joke itself, if one considers the journey to Lübeck (!) that Bach made in 1705, on foot, to meet Dietrich Buxtehude, the greatest German composer of his time.
More seriously, Jörg Halubek is a complete musician. An organist and harpsichordist, he also studied period performance practice with Jesper Christensen and Andrea Marcon at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, before forming his own ensemble, il Gusto Barocco, with whom he has made several recordings.
This new album is devoted to early works composed in Lüneburg and Arnstadt. It contains the Orgelbüchlein ("Little Organ Book"), the famous collection of forty-six organ chorales composed by Bach between 1708 and 1717 and published in the mid-19th century, a must for all organist apprentices worldwide. The other side of this album is devoted to the Partitas BWV 770 and 766 to 768, in which Bach's unique personality is already apparent. © François Hudry/Qobuz