Rheinberger’s twenty
organ sonatas provide a wealth of organ
music from the late German Romantic
period, without even taking into account
his numerous other small works. Each
sonata takes us on a musical journey
through interesting harmonic worlds
while creating complete, well-rounded
sonata forms. They are a joy to listen
to, especially when performed by a talented
organist, and performed on a suitable
organ. This album manages to accomplish
both.
Rudolf Innig is a fantastic
organist, and his technical proficiency
demonstrated on this CD is amazing.
Rheinberger’s music, like that of so
many other organ composers of the period,
is often not only technically difficult,
but musically challenging. Inning manages
to find and brings to us the full power
and emotion of these works. The orchestral
design of the south-German Romantic
organs presents difficulties in registration
and performance for the typical modern
organist. Successfully pulling off music
of this nature requires a through knowledge
of the music, the period and the organ.
Despite his technical agility, I didn’t
feel as if I experienced the entire
tonal palette of this organ. The forte
choruses are grand, full and exciting,
but it is the quieter moments lacking
from this album. Such an instrument,
with its wealth of fundamental (over
half the organ is 8 foot and 16 foot
stops) can easily bury the music in
its own sound. Innig works to bring
out musical lines, but in a Rheinberger
fugue, the music can become a muddled
wall of sound. I don’t know if this
is the fault of the organist, the engineers
or the early 20th century
organ designers.
The twelve trios, while
most suited to instructional use, make
for quaint listening for the second
half of the album. Each one is a unique
musical item and each offers an opportunity
to show off different aspects of this
instrument. However I found the registration
choices bland and unimaginative. The
organist will appreciate the list of
Innig’s registrations for every track
on the album, but it is often easy to
see the standard and disappointing choices
of stops out of such a beautiful tonal
array.
The Kuhn Organ in the
church of St. Anton in Zürich is
a rare find. Built in 1914, it was designed
exactly for the music of composers such
as Rheinberger. With a few changes and
adaptations over the past century, the
Kuhn company recently completed restoring
it to its original configuration just
in time for this recording. The church
was unique at the time of its construction
in that the architects planned for the
organ, both architecturally and acoustically,
making a successful marriage of organ
and room. The recording of the instrument
is free of any extra instrumental noises,
and is very well done and this is achieved
despite the very dark, heavy sound of
the instrument.
Brent Johnson
Rudolf Innig (organ) 
