Perhaps you’ve had bad experiences listening to organ music, perhaps you believe that after Bach and the latter-19th/early-20th century French organ composers there’s nothing left to be accomplished in writing for this instrument, or perhaps you just never really listened before. Whatever the case, this surprisingly accessible, even invitingly listenable program of works from Gdansk-born composer Jan Janca–among whose teachers were Johann Nepomuk David and Marcel Dupré–just may convince you that in the right hands (of both composer and organist) a modern creative voice can still find unique expression through the organ’s challenging array of stops, keys, and pedals. Yes, there’s an unmistakable French influence at work in the majority of these pieces, nearly all of which are “organ versets” (meditations or commentaries, often improvisatory or in the style of improvisations, based on hymn tunes or other liturgical themes), especially regarding Janca’s characteristic and often astonishing use of color. There’s tremendous variety of moods, tempos, and harmonic language: although this is all very tonal music, it frequently wanders into some very dissonant territory–never unpleasant and always leading somewhere, to some logical and satisfying point of finality.
Ludger Lohmann is a spectacularly gifted organist, and he’s fully in command of an equally worthy instrument, the organ at St. Johannes Tübingen, whose impressive specifications are listed along with exact registrations for each piece that Lohmann performs. The technique is all you could ask for–smooth legatos, agile leaps and runs, daring pedal-work, and integration of the myriad components of music and instrument that always seems sensible and never less than artful. The sound is ideal–you can turn this up and really feel the power.
