Stralsunder Romantik

The program idea for this album came about after several exciting discoveries in archives of 19th-century organ music were made. As a result, five of the seven composers represented are directly related to the 19th-century organ scene in Stralsund: August Wilhelm Bach, Robert Dornheckter, Friedrich Wilhelm Franke, Rudolf Looks and Georg Riemenschneider. Matthias Pech can be heard playing the Organ in St. Nikolai in Stralsund, built by Carl August Buchholz, on this recording and has been active at this instrument since 2003. Few composers from the romantic period of organ music are truly well known today, and only gradually have the works of these composers become accessible and well known. The congenial instrument for their works as well as for those by the great Romantics Felix Mendelssohn and Carl Loewe is the organ in St. Nikolai, built by Carl August Buchholz between 1838 and 1841. It's restoration and reconstruction by the organ builders Wegscheider and Klais between 2003 and 2006 was made possible by the large, surviving sister organ in the Black Church in the Transylvanian city of Brasov, Romania, which Buchholz completed in 1839. Today, the "little sister" in Stralsund once again presents a convincing tonal impression of early German Romanticism. It is still steeped in the tradition of the late Baroque period, but at the same time points far into the Romantic period and is one of the largest surviving German organs from the period between 1800 and 1850.