What about Georg Böhm? It is one of those composers whose name you often come across in relation to the organ works of
Buxtehude and
Bach, but whose music is relatively unheard of. French organist Christophe Guida is eager to change that. Böham's compact and thus surveyable organ oeuvre falls roughly into three genres: praeludia, chorale preludes, fantasies and partitas. Regarding the latter genre,
… Böhm was a true trendsetter. Unlike earlier partitas on secular folk melodies, Böhm took the church song as his starting point. In successive "variations," the chorale melody passes by in different guises. A wonderful example of this on this album is the voluminous partita Treuer ich muß dich klagen - Freu dich sehr, o meine Seel (known in Dutch Protestant churches as the melody of Psalm 42). The sequence carefully builds to a resounding climax in the sixth variation. The piece would serve as a model for the various chorale partitas Bach later composed. That, by the way, is not the only similarity between the organ works of the two composers, who, by the way, knew each other well. Like Bach, Böhm was well acquainted with French and Italian keyboard music of his time. The recording location of this album is symbolic from that point of view. Christophe Guida plays the organ built in 2015 by Dominique Thomas at the Eglise Protestante Saint-Jean of Wissembourg in Alsace, an area with both German and French history. (JWvR)more
