Jan Hennig - Karg-Elert: Späte Meisterwerke für Kunstharmonium (2021)

Since 1905 Sigfrid Karg-Elert was occupied with the art harmonium, which until then was unknown in Germany. Between 1910 and 1913 he wrote his main works for the Kunstharmonium: “Two Orchestral Concert Studies” op. 70 and the Second Sonata op. 53. He tried to establish the Kunstharmonium in concert life in Germany. His efforts were interrupted by the First World War. After the war he preferred to compose chamber music and organ works. Nevertheless, he remained true to "his" instrument, numerous arrangements and many valuable, smaller pieces were made.

The Second Sonata op. 46 is the largest and most important work ever written for harmonium. The sonata is held together by the cross-movement use of the individual themes. The main subject, B. A.C. H., dominates the imagination; it appears as the second theme of the double fugue and forms the culmination point of the second, slow movement. But also in the toccata the second theme from B. A.C. H. formed and almost the entire implementation is based on it. More than twenty years later, Karg-Elert incorporated extensive passages of the sonata into one of his last great organ works - the Passacaglia and Fugue (B. A.C. H) op.150.