Hansjorg Albrecht - Pictures from Russia: Three Organ Transcriptions (2008) [SACD]

The man most certainly does not need to be introduced, as Hansjörg Albrecht meanwhile has become one of the great organ players of his generation. One of his specialities is that he transcribes works originally not written to be played on the organ at all. OehmsClassics has already published excerpts from Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung as well as the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. For his third recording of works transcribed for organ, Hansjörg Albrecht decided to take on some Russian classicists, and so we can now enjoy listening to Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures of an Exhibition. The composer originally wrote his cycle for the piano; Maurice Ravel added an arrangement for orchestra. Sergey Rachmaninov, however, expressly wrote his Isle of the Dead for an entire orchestra. This symphonic poem is a musical rendering of Arnold Böcklin’s famous picture with the same title. In 1911, Igor Stravinsky in his turn caused an absolute scandal with his Petrushka, arranged for a large orchestra: the motor rhythms seemed too bold indeed. As was the case for the previous recordings, the recordings are high-end SACD recordings.