Joseph Kelemen - Luebeck: Organ Works (2005) [SACD]

Organist Joseph Kelemen performs the standard nine Vincent Lübeck organ pieces on Oehms Classics' Vincent Lübeck: Das Orgelwerk. These pieces are played on an instrument that could hardly be more authentic in terms of Lübeck; a 1675 Huss-Schnitger organ at the church of St. Cosmae et Damiani in Stade, Germany, that Lübeck played from the time it was installed until 1702. Kelemen makes the most of the occasion -- one doesn't want to say, "pulling out all the stops," but Kelemen ensures that registrations suit the pieces under consideration, from the dinky G major Prelude -- probably not the work of Lübeck, but his son -- all the way up to the gigantic G minor Prelude for which he is best known. Some of Kelemen's use of registration is imaginative, and his pedal work is impressive at several points in this program. Oehms' recording is a good one, though this Super Audio CD registers some very loud louds and very quiet quiets, but seems to lack an in-between. The main competition in this literature is Friedheim Flamme on CPO playing the same nine pieces on a modern organ located at the Stiftkirche at St. Georg in Tubingen. Flamme is not forced to transpose the chorale prelude Nun Last uns Gott den Herren and the E major Prelude, as Kelemen is on the meantone tempered Schnitger organ; these pieces were obviously written after Lübeck's time in Stade for a different instrument. CPO's recording is drier and more fully forward than this Oehms effort.

Of Vincent Lübeck's "standard nine," it is generally accepted that the preludes and fugues in F and G major are not the work of Lübeck, but of his son, also named Vincent Lübeck. We are not reminded of this in the Oehms disc's liner notes, though we are apprised of the matter relating to the discovery of a number of previously unknown keyboard pieces accredited to Lübeck made in the Berlin Singakademie collection when it was returned to Germany from Kiev. These additional works formed the basis of a new edition of Lübeck's works edited by Siegbert Rampe and published by Bärenreiter in 2003. While the new edition is in use here, none of the unfamiliar pieces are included -- there apparently is some doubt as to whether they are for organ or harpsichord, and we are told that they "do not show signs of great musical imagination." Well, whatever -- it would have been a nice bonus to include at least one of them, and it would have set this disc apart somewhat from the competition.