Adapting orchestral music for the organ can be a tricky matter, and few transcriptions work ideally despite the similarity of the organ's varied stops to the instruments of the orchestra and its capacity to imitate an orchestra's massed forces and wide dynamic range. However, when the music happens to be arrangements of excerpts from Richard Wagner's opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen the trickiness of the project becomes even more obvious, for the difficulties of these complex orchestral pieces are only compounded ...
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Adapting orchestral music for the organ can be a tricky matter, and few transcriptions work ideally despite the similarity of the organ's varied stops to the instruments of the orchestra and its capacity to imitate an orchestra's massed forces and wide dynamic range. However, when the music happens to be arrangements of excerpts from Richard Wagner's opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen the trickiness of the project becomes even more obvious, for the difficulties of these complex orchestral pieces are only compounded when transferred to the organ. Notwithstanding Hansjörg Albrecht's amazing virtuosity and undeniable cleverness in turning Wagner's lavish music into keyboard showpieces, and the elaborate measures taken by engineer Martin Fischer in recording this album, the transformations don't always work well musically, and these concert extracts from Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung lose some of their essential qualities in the translation. The Prelude to Rheingold may be...
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