The mezzo forte has a full and warm sound – a gentle crescendo, swelling only a little, before the music fades away into a murmuring pianissimo. Changing colours develop without the slightest break, and the queen of instruments builds up endless suspense on its way to the magnificent fortissimo in Georg Muffat’s passacaglia. Andreas Sieling presents the Alte Meister collection in Karl Straube’s romantic edition on the historic Sauer organ in the Berlin Cathedral.
Andreas Sieling, the cathedral organist in Berlin, has a “home organ” enabling him to draw on immense resources to his heart’s desire. With its more than a hundred stops assigned to four manuals, Ru?ckpositiv, and Pedal, the instrument offers an absolutely endless wealth of sound. When the organ was constructed by the famous Wilhelm Sauer Workshop in 1905, it was Germany’s largest organ. Fortunately, it has maintained its original form until the present day, so that this room-filling multichannel 2+2+2 Recording indeed is able to offer an authentic look at the interpretation history of baroque organ music at the beginning of the twentieth century.
