The canon of German organ music is so vast that even general familiarity with Johann Sebastian Bach's considerable oeuvre for the king of instruments barely scratches the surface. Therefore, Audite's
Praeludien für die heilige Weihnachtszeit, featuring organist Johannes Strobl at the Great Organ of the Abbey Church of Muri in Switzerland, is something of a godsend, as it transmits music from the century that followed Bach in pieces ranging from the 1750s to about 1840. Chances are -- unless you are hip to Johann Ernst Eberlin, who has enjoyed some moderate exposure on disc -- you will not have heard of any of the composers on this collection apart from our good old friend "Anonymous." What marries them, along with their shared time period and nationality, is the genre of the pastorale or pastourelle, a special kind of Christmas piece that approximates the sound of the Italian bagpipes or zampogna and evokes the pastoral mood of the Nativity. To judge from the music collected here, German composers were capable of working a broad variety of ideas out of this concept ranging from modest, almost minimalistic pieces such as the Pastorella in A by Johann Anton Kobrich to grand statements like the concluding "Presto" from Franz Xaver Schnizer's Sonata in G, Op. 1/6. The Great Organ at Muri Abbey -- the largest of five that they have, built by Thomas Schott in about 1630 and updated by the Bossards in 1744 -- easily matches in sound the great variety of approach heard in the compositions, and Strobl's use of registration and expression ensures that there is never a dull moment, or at least for most of the program. As the snappy, high-spirited pieces of the late classical and transitional period to the romantic give way to the full-blown romantic works, there is -- unfortunately -- a growing sense of complacency in the material. This occurs with the comparatively long-winded, chromatically wandering Johann Kasper Aiblinger work and continues to the end of the disc. Certainly there is good nineteenth-century organ music for Christmas, but the Aiblinger and Robert Führer pieces that conclude the program are more typical of their era than revelatory of it. Nevertheless, Audite's
Praeludien für die heilige Weihnachtszeit is beautifully recorded, very well played, and provides a different and refreshing spin on one's musical component to the holidays.