Buxtehude Organ Works, Marie-Claire Alain playing the Schnitger (1740) and Ahrend (1984) organs of the Martinikerk

Buxtehude Organ Works, Marie-Ciaire Alain playing the Schnitger (1740) and Ahrend (1984) organs of the Martinikerk, Groningen, Holland. Apex/Warner Classics. Available from ohscatalog.org. Marie-Claire Alain's 1986 recordings of the complete works of Dieterich Buxtehude were re-issued on March ii, 2013, on the Apex/Warner Classics label as a two CD set. Thanks to the wonders of digital technology, these new CDs sound as good as the original Erato pressings. As usual, Marie-Claire Alain's reading of this music is informed, musical, communicative, and satisfying. (This is in fact her second recording of the complete works of Buxtehude; the first dates from the 1960s for The Musical Heritage Society.) This collection in every way captures the glory of the noble 1740 Schnitger organ in the spacious acoustic of Groningen's Martinikerk. Recorded just two years after Jürgen Ahrend's acclaimed restoration, the organ sounds spectacular and Alain's intégrale explores a myriad of registrational possibilities, from bold and silvery plenums to piquant mutations, mumbling flutes, and colorful, sometimes buttery, sometimes buzzy reeds. The "photography of sound" is superb.