Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Ultimate Organ Works Vol.8 – Volker

   in Choir & Organ (Jan, 2017)
Karg-Elert’s transcription of the Festmusik from Die Meistersinger provides an arresting opening to this latest of volume of Aeolus’s Karg-Elert cycle, in which Elke Völker offers an intuitive sense of rhythmic flexibility, lending highly apt colour to the composer’s unique, almost cinematic, impressionism. The large (IV/96) Steinmeyer organ, much admired by Karg-Elert himself and only slightly altered, plays its role perfectly with its masses of 8ftcolour and appropriately eccentric appearances by the Glockenspiel and Celesta (for example, in the well-known Valse mignonne). Unexpectedly, on the basis of the photos, the room is very dry and the recording feels a bit oppressive. Aeolus’s outstanding presentation renders this typically attractive. …