I took delivery of my very first organ CD! In my youth, I bought a very small number of organ LPs, but they did not last long. My antipathy towards the organ centred upon a) its prominent place in churches and the Christian religion and b) the unholy racket it could often unleash upon the unsuspecting listener.

A re-think was occasioned by the 30 minute organ recital I heard in Halle a couple of weeks ago (on "Handel"'s organ, see a previous entry). Suddenly the organ became a cousin of the wind choir, and not necessarily an instrument for accompanying lugubrious hymns or chorales. So this weekend on the turntable went Klemens Schnorr playing the Simnacher-Kubak organ in the Jesuit Church of Mindelheim (Augsburg region). Short pieces by a meriad of unknown (to me) composers: Buxtehude, Scheidt, Bruhns, Kerll, Kobrich, CPE Bach, Corrette, Balbastre, Vierne, Grison and Knecht. The only piece where I had to press the "next piece" button was Jules Grison's Toccata in F major, which reminded me of a young man in a car with dual, modified exhaust pipes playing loud rap music with all the windows down. But most of the music was delightful, viz Claude Balbastre's Noëls: Au jô deu de pubelle, Grand déi, ribon ribeine [if any reader dead or alive can translate this, please do and let me know]. I shall buy more baroque organ recordings. With care.

The listening period was greatly enhanced also by Clara Haskil, a "cult" recording artist with whom I have only had a nodding acquaintance for the past fifty years. But her Audite recordings of Mozart concertos (19 and 20 -- the latter in two versions) plus Beethoven 4th concerto, had me entranced by the sheer effective simplicity and purity of her playing. She even (nearly) won me over to Schumann in the fill-ups -- Schumann's Bunte Blätter Op 90, plus the Abegg-Variationen Op 1. But I could have done without the Abeggs.