Variations (arr. For Organ)

CHRISTOPH SCHOENER

Johannes Brahms was baptized in St. Michael’s Church in Hamburg in 1833, and on this recording he returns to this site. Christoph Schoener, the organist and church music director at St. Michael’s, honors his famous fellow Hamburg citizen with a special tribute. Three variation works by this Hansa town’s musical great are heard in transpositions for the organ on this program, and on the mighty three-in-one St. Michael’s Church organ the result is a dimension-blasting room effect. It is above all the echo organ that creates the special musical effect. When Schoener has the tenderest string stops concertize with the swell work of the grand organ in the Handel Variations, a moving one-of-a-kind atmosphere spreads out. The finely sensitive registration means that the Andante from the String Sextet in B flat major also assumes a new intensity; the arrangement is so perfect that it sounds just as if the music had been composed for the organ. And one more surprise: familiar orchestral colors from the popular Haydn Variations are interpreted anew in St. Michael’s Church.