Almost everybody who's ever been through a Halloween funhouse knows Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, but good, budget-priced collections of Bach's greatest hits for the organ have not been overly common. This one, by French organist Michel Chapuis, will fill the bill; Chapuis is a pedagogue and investigator of a sterling reputation who has traversed all of Bach's organ music over 14 CDs (if you find that this one really rings your bell). These recordings were made in the 1970s and 1980s. The issues of ...
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Almost everybody who's ever been through a Halloween funhouse knows Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, but good, budget-priced collections of Bach's greatest hits for the organ have not been overly common. This one, by French organist Michel Chapuis, will fill the bill; Chapuis is a pedagogue and investigator of a sterling reputation who has traversed all of Bach's organ music over 14 CDs (if you find that this one really rings your bell). These recordings were made in the 1970s and 1980s. The issues of "historical performance" are slightly different for the organ than for stringed instruments and ensembles, but Chapuis' interpretations have the strengths of the movement that was beginning to take shape during those years. In line with the fact that Bach himself, and surely the other organists who played his music, used an instrument smaller than the behemoths that have come down to us from the centuries between Bach's time and our own, Chapuis cultivates a lighter tone. (There is no...
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