JS Bach • Arvo Pärt Bach & Pärt – JS Bach: Prelude and Fugue in E flat, BWV 552 ‘St Anne’; Organ Concerto in D minor (after Vivaldi), BWV 596 etc; Arvo Pärt: Pari intervallo; trivium; Spiegel im Spiegel David Bendix Nielsen (organ) Orchid Classics ORC100197 76:38 mins
Whether or not you view the organ as a ‘church instrument’, spirituality certainly unites the two composers juxtaposed here. Yet for all the intelligent design in the Danish-Hungarian organist David Bendix Nielsen’s programme of JS Bach and Arvo Pärt, this release promises slightly more than it delivers, and perhaps the clever tonal connections he makes between the works get obscured by the sheer contrast between Bach’s forward-moving energy and Pärt’s melancholy stillness. Whatever the case, his recital makes less impact than the Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna’s superb recording on Oehms of Bach and Glass – admittedly, a very different sort of minimalist.
Both feature neo-Baroque organs, in Nielsen’s case that of the Garrison Church in Copenhagen. The instrument is not quite ethereal enough for the mirror(s) evoked in Pärt’s famous Spiegel im Spiegel, but is more convincing in the composer’s Pari intervallo. It also sounds suitably ‘breathy’ in Trivium, one of Pärt’s first tintinnabular pieces, whose D minor tonality finds reflection in a buoyant yet delicate performance of Bach’s Concerto in D minor after Vivaldi, BWV 596. This and a searching account of the chorale prelude An Wasserflüssen Babylon, BWV 653, are the Bachian highlights. Nielsen bookends his recital with two of Bach’s most imposing organ works (the Prelude and Fugue in E flat, BWV 552, and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582), and both receive crisp and solid performances: not quite enough in music that can be exhilarating.
John Allison
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