Pope Benedict may have retired, but a pipe organ named after him and paid for by a foundation run by his brother continues to make spectacular sounds in Regensburg, Germany.
Recorded in 2006, but only just released in North America by Chromart Classics, is a 76-minute best-of album compiled from the inaugural concerts held in the basilica of Alte Kapelle around the time of a personal visit by Pope Benedict in September of that year.
The Peter Kaiser Memorial Foundation paid the three-quarters-of-a-million euro cost of installing a new instrument behind the rococco facade, which dates from 1791. The conditions for the funding were that the organ become a living memorial of Pope Benedict and that the music of composer Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901) be played on it as often as possible.
The album contains a Rheinberger Sonata, a Prelude and Fugue by J.S. Bach, a Chaconne by Johann Pachelbel, pieces by two obscure German organists, one baroque the other classical, Felix Mendelssohn’s wonderful second-of-six Sonata in C minor, Op. 65, and the pièce de résistance: 25 minutes of impossibly elaborate improvisation by organist Wolfgang Seifen around Gregorian chant sung by the resident Choralschola.
The other organists represented in this compilation — Gerhard Weinberger, Norbert Düchtel and Edgar Krapp — are excellent, using this Swiss-built Mathis-Näfels instrument to its fullest advantage.
The sound has the bite typical of a baroque-inspired instrument but the lyricism and roundness to handle romantic music as well.
This disc is a treat from start to finish, but I think the improvisation alone is worth the price of the CD. The details are available on the German-only site here. The full story of the organ is also available only in German, here.
Here is a tourist’s video visit to the Alte Kapelle which, coincidentally, has someone playing the second movement of the Mendelssohn Sonata on the organ:
Here is clip of Seifen improvising away on a different organ:
John Terauds