Heinz Wunderlich dead at age 92

Sally Cherrington Beggs, chair of the music department and college organist at Newberry College, Newberry, South Carolina, died March 17. Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania
in 1959, she received her undergraduate education at Susquehanna University, and master’s and doctoral degrees at Yale University, where she studied with Thomas Murray and Charles Krigbaum. While at Yale she won the Charles Ives Organ Prize and the Faculty Award from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and was named the Frank Bozyan Organ Scholar from 1989 to 1991. An instructor in organ at Yale as well as the minister of music at the First Congregational Church in Wallingford, Connecticut, she had served as staff organist and teacher for the Allen Organ Company.

Cherrington relocated to South Carolina in 2000 from the Chicago area, where she served for ten years as director of music at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Park Ridge, and as college organist and adjunct faculty at Elmhurst College. She served as a substitute organist throughout the Columbia area, including at Aveleigh Presbyterian in Newberry and St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Chapin, and as a part-time organist at St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Lexington. She had performed recitals and conducted workshops throughout the eastern seaboard and Midwest, including at two OHS conventions, as well as making several concert tours of Europe as a soloist or accompanist. Dr. Cherrington had articles published in The Diapason, Your Church, Grace Notes, and CrossAccent; her article on “Organ Pedagogy” appears in the new International Organ Encyclopedia published by Routledge. Sally Cherrington Beggs is survived by her husband of 19 years, Mike Beggs, sons Zachary and Nathan, and sisters Linda Svok and Peggy Reese.

David Craighead died March 26 in Rochester, New York, at the age of 88, after a long and distinguished career as a recitalist and as professor of organ at the Eastman School of Music. Craighead joined the Eastman faculty in 1955 and served as professor of organ and chair of the organ division of the keyboard department until his retirement in 1992. He was also organist of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Rochester from 1955 to 2003. He was named Professor Emeritus at Eastman and Organist Emeritus at St. Paul’s when he retired. 

A renowned recitalist, David Craighead performed throughout the United States and Europe. He played in seven national conventions of the American Guild of Organists as well as at International Congresses held in London, Philadelphia, and Cambridge, England. He made several recordings, including one with his wife, Marian Reiff Craighead, to whom he was married for 47 years. Until her death in May 1996, they presented concerts for organ duet in numerous cities across the United States.

“David Craighead’s contribution to the music world is incalculable,” said David Higgs, Professor and Chair of Organ and Historical Keyboards. “He was a virtuoso performer, able to make the most difficult technical passages seem easy; he was a tireless champion of new music for our instrument, having played the first performances of many of the pieces that are now in our standard repertoire; and a beloved teacher, mentor, and friend to the legions of students he taught in his 37 years as professor of organ and chair of the organ department here.”

Craighead received both teaching and performance honors. In 1974, the Eastman School of Music awarded him its first Eisenhart Award for Teaching Excellence. The New York City AGO chapter named him International Performer of the Year in 1983. He received honorary doctorates from Lebanon Valley College and Duquesne University, where he also served as adjunct professor of organ. He also was awarded an honorary Fellowship in the Royal College of Organists, London, England.

In 2008, the new organ in Rochester’s Christ Church was inaugurated as the Craighead-Saunders Organ, named in honor of Professor Craighead and Russell Saunders, who was professor of organ at Eastman from 1967 until 1992.

Born on January 24, 1924, in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, David Craighead was the son of a Presbyterian minister and received his first music lessons from his mother, an organist. He was awarded his Bachelor of Music degree in 1946 from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he also was the organist of the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church. While still at Curtis, he was a touring recitalist and taught at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, during his senior year.

In 1944 he was accepted as a touring recitalist by Concert Management Bernard R. LaBerge, which is now Karen McFarlane Artists, making his first transcontinental tour shortly after. 

Craighead was appointed organist at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, where he helped design the church’s organ and did bi-weekly organ recital broadcasts. He also taught in the music department of Occidental College from 1948 through 1955 before his appointment to the Eastman School of Music.

Recordings include a 1968 Artisan LP disc of compositions by Franck, Mendelssohn, and Messiaen; and two recordings for the Crystal Record Company (one of works of Samuel Adler, Paul Cooper, and Lou Harrison; the second, The King of Instruments by William Albright and Sonata for Organ by Vincent Persichetti). He also made two recordings for Gothic, one of late nineteenth-century American composers, and the other of Albright’s Organbook I and Organbook III. The most recent recording, for Delos, features Reger’s Second Sonata and Vierne’s Symphony VI.

David Craighead is survived by his children, James R. Craighead and Elizabeth C. Eagan; grandsons Christopher and Jeffrey Eagan; his sister-in-law and three great-granddaughters.

Father Larry Heiman, a member of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood (C.PP.S.), died in his sleep on February 26, in the infirmary at St. Charles Center, Carthagena, Ohio. Born in 1917, he entered his religious community in 1932 and graduated from St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, in 1940. Soon after ordination, he began teaching music and drama at St. Joseph’s College; he spent most of his life teaching at this institution. In summer 1960, he initiated a summer program that would become the Rensselaer Program of Church Music and Liturgy. Father Heiman completed graduate studies at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, earning his doctorate in 1970, and returned to Rensselaer to establish a similar education program in Gregorian chant and polyphony. 

Father Heiman served the National Association of Pastoral Musicians as a frequent contributor to Pastoral Music, as a speaker at NPM conventions, and as the calendar editor for Pastoral Music from 1976 until his “retirement.” NPM honored Father Heiman with its Jubilate Deo Award in 2002. 

Joseph Johann Karl Ritter II, organbuilder, age 70, died March 19, 2011, at Cape May Court House, New Jersey. Born in Clinton, Illinois, he was trained in structural engineering and industrial mechanics, and his interest in organbuilding began as an outgrowth of these disciplines. In 1973, he took possession of a 1905 II/15 Hinners tracker from a closed Baptist church in Clinton. He disassembled and reassembled the instrument two times in situ, and twice more after relocating to Ft. Pierce, Florida (where he worked for a small marine engineering company) and Green Creek, New Jersey, successively. While maintaining his full-time career in heavy industry, he began the study of organbuilding, with a focus on case design, structural layout, and 20th-century electro-pneumatic windchest design.

After settling in Green Creek in the early 1980s, Ritter converted a large portion of his workshop facilities to organ work, including woodworking, pipe repair, leathering, windchest construction, electrical wiring, and fabrication of structural and winding components. At this time he built a III/12 unit organ in his private studio. This instrument was combined with a full 35mm Simplex movie projector, screen, and seating for eight. In 1997 he began a long association with the firm of Russell Meyer & Associates of Bridgeton, New Jersey, becoming shop foreman, and was involved in the construction and installation of ten of the firm’s instruments.

In retirement, at the time of his death, Ritter was involved in a substantial remodeling of his home, which involved conversion of a room into an organ chamber, into which he was in the process of installing Midmer-Losh Opus 5025, a five-rank unit organ, and had begun work on expanding it to an expected ten ranks. 

Heinz Wunderlich, organ virtuoso, teacher, and composer, died on March 10, 2012, in Großhandsdorf, Germany, at the age of 92. He was predeceased by his first wife, Charlotte, in 1982, and by his second wife, the violinist Nelly Söregi Wunderlich, in 2004. He is survived by three daughters and a stepson.

Wunderlich’s early study was with his father and the local church organist. At the age of sixteen, he was admitted to the Academy of Music in Leipzig, where he was the youngest student. While he was studying with Karl Straube and Johann Nepomuk David, his lifelong interest in the music of Max Reger began. Despite growing up and living in the tumultuous time between the First and Second World Wars, he held prestigious positions and became well known for his many recitals and improvisations. Since he was trapped in the East, his career could not advance until he was able to escape in 1958 with his wife and daughters. He took the position of music director at St. Jacobi in Hamburg, where he oversaw the reconstruction of the well-known Arp Schnitger organ, which had been removed during the war. For many years he was also Professor of Organ and Improvisation at the Hamburg College of Music, where he met his second wife.

As he began to concertize throughout the world, including several tours with his choir, the Kantorei St. Jacobi, his fame grew exponentially. In the United States alone he made twenty-six tours. Students came from all over the world to study with him—many to study the works of Max Reger, as Wunderlich was one of the few musicians who was in a direct line of succession with Reger. 

Wunderlich leaves quite an extensive body of organ works, as well as choral music. He remained active as a recitalist until his 91st year, when he decided not to play any more. (See “Heinz Wunderlich at 90,” by Jay Zoller, The Diapason, April 2009, pp. 19–21; “80th Birthday Tribute—Heinz Wunderlich,” by David Burton Brown, The Diapason, April 1999, p. 18; “Heinz Wunderlich at 74,” by David Burton Brown, The Diapason, April 1994, p. 6; and “The Published Organ Works of Heinz Wunderlich,” by David Burton Brown, The Diapason, April 1994, pp. 12–13.)

—Jay Zoller

Jay Zoller is the organist at South Parish Congregational Church in Augusta, Maine, where he plays the church’s historic 1866 E. & G. G. Hook organ. He holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the School of Theology at Boston University. He is a retired designer for the Andover Organ Company and currently designs for the Organ Clearing House. He resides in Newcastle, Maine with his wife Rachel. Zoller, as a high school student in 1961, was fortunate to hear Heinz Wunderlich play at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall on his first American tour. They began a professional relationship in 1989 when Zoller played in a master class that Wunderlich was giving. Since then, Zoller has studied with Heinz Wunderlich and has performed many of Wunderlich’s organ compositions in recital. In addition to writing several articles about Professor Wunderlich for The American Organist and Choir and Organ magazines, Zoller has played in all-Wunderlich recitals in Hamburg, Germany in 1999 and again in 2004. He plans to participate in the 2009 festivities as well.

Old age for most people means a slowing down and a loss of the abilities they once had. If they are among the few who live to their ninth decade, they usually live a very limited existence.
If they are among the very few, often very gifted, artists who are sustained by their art and who, by force of will, work at their art, they continue to be productive in their chosen field. One thinks of the painter Andrew Wyeth who remained active in his work until he died, and was nourished by his deep roots in Pennsylvania and rural coastal Maine. As a young man, after determining what he was about, he remained true to his calling throughout his life, undeterred by different trends that swirled around him.
Heinz Wunderlich has also been sustained by his roots, which reach back to the music of Max Reger, transmitted to him by his teacher Karl Straube. And, like Wyeth, Professor Wunderlich has remained true to his calling, digging deep into the music of Reger and Bach and carrying that tradition into the 21st century with his own works, despite trends that have gone off in all directions.

Hamburg celebrations in 2009
On April 25, 2009, Heinz Wunderlich will turn 90. As happens every five years for Wunderlich’s birthday, all Hamburg turns out for a festival of recitals. This year is no different.
The first concert is to be at St. Petri on Saturday, April 25, and is an organ recital of Wunderlich’s works played by former students: Dörte Maria Packeiser (Heidenheim), Eva-Maris Sachs (Erlangen), Sirka Schwartz-Uppendieck (Fürth), Izumi Ikeda (Japan), Jay Zoller (USA), and Andreas Rondthaler (Hamburg).
Sunday morning, April 26, Wunderlich’s Ökumenische Messe (2006) under the direction of former student and Director of Music at St. Petri, Thomas Dahl, will receive its premiere. On Tuesday, April 28, Heinz Wunderlich will play a recital at Hauptkirche St. Jacobi where the famous Arp Schnitger organ resides. Wednesday the 29th, back at St. Petri, there will be a concert for chorus, organ, and orchestra that will include the Concerto for Organ and Orchestra on the name of BACH by Heinz Wunderlich. The generous acoustics of both St. Petri and St. Jacobi and the high caliber of the artists involved will make each of these concerts an event to remember.
I have always come away from these concerts in the past with a feeling for the great respect and love that Professor Wunderlich’s former students and his Hamburg audiences have for him. His late wife, the violinist Nelly Söregi-Wunderlich, once told me that when he plays in Hamburg the church is always full. I have found that to be true in the concerts I have attended.
At 90, Heinz Wunderlich continues to compose, play concerts, and prepare his earlier compositions for publication. Retirement for him has only meant a change of emphasis from teaching and church work to writing, recording,
and publishing.

Early life
Paul Arthur Heinz Wunderlich was born in Leipzig on April 25, 1919. At the time of his birth, the First World War had just ended and the Paris Peace Conference was meeting to decide the fate of Europe. Indeed, the Treaty of Versailles was signed a mere two months after his birth. The social upheavals that occurred during the next twenty years before World War II did not radically interrupt his childhood, which was very quiet. However, inflation worsened and by 1929 had affected the whole world economy. There was fear and uncertainty as Hitler made his bid for power. In May 1936, the 17-year-old Wunderlich witnessed the destruction of the Mendelssohn Memorial in front of the Gewandhaus and the loss of jobs that many musicians suffered.
As a young child of five, Wunderlich was traveling on the train with his parents when a faulty door latch let the child fall out of the moving train onto the tracks between two moving trains. His father pulled the brake to stop the train and a doctor who happened to be on board administered to the child until they reached the hospital in Leipzig. The train company was found negligent and made monthly payments to the family.
Wunderlich’s family was musical. On his father’s side were pianists, all the way back to his great-grandfather.

I began taking piano lessons from my father when I was ten. I made progress and one year later began studying piano and composition with Joachim Voigt who was the organist at our church. I grew interested in the organ, and when I was fifteen began studying organ with Mr. Voigt as well. I studied the flute for awhile and, for a little time, the violin also, but I cannot play either now.
My father wanted to study piano at the Hochschule, but couldn’t because he had no money for that. His father was a piano teacher and his father, my great-grandfather, as well as his father, my great, great-grandfather, were all piano teachers. I also had an uncle who was a very good cellist, but he died very young.2

On his mother’s side of the family were musicians also.
My mother played the piano a little bit. She played some with me. My mother’s cousin was a conductor in Prague and my grand aunt from the same family as my mother was a singer. She sang in opera and also got her start in Leipzig.

Musical training
At the age of sixteen, Heinz was accepted into the Academy of Music in Leipzig, earning the distinction of being the youngest student at the famous school. It was there that he began organ study with Karl Straube, who had been a friend and colleague of Max Reger. At sixteen he began his study of and lifelong interest in the music of Max Reger.

We were three, four, five students in one four-hour class with Straube. And so we listened to all of the other students as they played and I played too. We played chorales, preludes, music of Bach, the music of Franck, French music, and also Reger. It was at this time that I began studying Reger. It was required of us. Reger had been a teacher in Leipzig and all of the great organists had come to Leipzig to study with Straube and before with Reger. Reger had been the older generation. He died in 1916 before I was born. But, Reger was required study and his compositions were very important.

Wunderlich also began his study of composition and choral conducting with Johann Nepomuk David. The rigorous training he got from this famous composer has stayed with him.

David was a very famous composer. In my last year, I had to write fugues based on the fugues from the Art of Fugue by Bach. They are complicated fugues with their own themes and we had to write our own themes and double and triple fugues. We began our study with fugues of Palestrina and studied all the old techniques and later on we came to modern music. It was very thorough.

When I asked Wunderlich if he remembered his very first compositions he said, smiling, “Yes, it was before this time, when I was 14 or 15 years old. But, I lost them!”
Another part of his musical training was orchestral conducting with Max Hochkofler. Hochkofler was Germany’s most famous conductor at the time and had many students.
In 1937, at the age of 18, Heinz accepted his first organist position, becoming the second organist at the Petri Church in Leipzig. The organist of this church was the second director of the Music Academy. It was great experience for the young man because he played services and pieces with orchestra. It was during this time, in 1938, that he wrote the Kontrapunktische Chaconne g-Moll.
Wunderlich completed his music degree in 1940, but continued to study with Straube through 1941. His examination was the finest testimonial earned up to that time at the academy: “with distinction in masterly organ performance and improvisation.” It was during these student days that he became widely known, not only for his many recitals, but also as an improviser. Wunderlich was the first student that Straube ever let play the Reger Phantasy, op. 57, in public.

Military service
After his additional year of study with Straube he was appointed Church Music Director at the Moritzkirche in Halle in 1941, a position once held by Samuel Scheidt. The German army drafted him, however, and his job had to wait. It was not a desirable time to be enlisted in the army, but because he had had typhoid as a child, he had problems with his heart. So, he was only fit for home duty. The military was also stationed in Halle and so in the evenings when the other soldiers went to drink beer, he could go to church and practice. He was discharged from the military in 1943.
During his time in the military, though, he studied with Heinrich Fleischer, a good organ teacher, who had also been a student of Straube. Wunderlich wrote the Fuga Variata in 1942 while he was a soldier.

Civilian life in East Germany
Upon completion of his military duties in 1943, Wunderlich began teaching organ and harpsichord at the Church Music School in Halle. It was here at his church where bombs fell just ten days before the end of the war. He was hiding in a basement with some other people, and after one of the bombs exploded on the other side of the wall, they were fortunate to be able to escape through the rubble. When they emerged, everything had been destroyed.
A week after the war ended, Wunderlich played a recital in his church, which had apparently been spared. Since there were no newspapers, they had to put up small handwritten notices. At the recital there were 1,000 people crowded into the church, many of whom could not sit down. It was a very emotional experience for all of them.
The Americans were in Halle until August of 1946, and then, because of Potsdam, it was given to the Russians. An American captain who had attended the recital in Halle later arranged a recital in Washington, D.C. in 1962 or ’63. That same captain was by then a professor of music history in Washington.
In 1946 a drunk Russian soldier stuck his pistol in Wunderlich’s face and demanded his papers, which he then said were forged. Wunderlich was ordered to accompany him, and they met yet another drunken soldier. Fortunately for Wunderlich, a Russian officer happened to see them and ordered the soldiers to go with him. Heinz was able, then, to make his escape.
Wunderlich met his first wife, Charlotte, in about 1943 while he was in Halle, and they married in 1946. It was for her that the Partita on “Macht hoch die Tür” was written in honor of their first Christmas together. They had twin daughters, Uta and Christina, born in 1949, and a third daughter, Ulrike, born in 1951.
In 1948 he wrote the Mixolydische Toccata and, just two years later, for the 200th anniversary of the death of Bach, played the complete organ works of Bach in a series of twenty-one concerts. It was also at this time that he became Overseer of Sacred Music and Organ for churches in the area.

There were 150 churches and I had to teach the organists, some of whom were not very advanced; many were not proficient at all. The organs were in need of repair after the war and I advised on what the organs needed by way of repairs and maintenance. Some needed pipes, it included almost anything. It was interesting.

Escape from East Germany
Wunderlich remained in Halle until 1958. One aspect of life under the communist government was that his career could not advance as rapidly as that of his contemporaries in other countries. He had received a number of offers to teach in the West, but as a church musician he was regarded as an enemy of the state. Although he had played concerts in the West including some at St. Jacobi in Hamburg, he could not get permission to leave the East and would have to do so illegally. The officials in Hamburg had expressed an interest in him, but without permission he could not leave. It was a difficult time for his young family. He had three young daughters, two who were nine and one who was seven. They had to go through Berlin before the wall was put up, and although you could go from east to west all the time, to avoid suspicion they could not travel together. So, Heinz went first; his wife and children came on a later train. Then, they met in West Germany much to the relief of all.
Heinz had sent his music and his books all out of the East the previous year to many different people in the West for safekeeping. And in that way, he was able to save much of the more important things. However, he had an organ and a piano in Halle that had to be left behind.

Professional life in the West
I had the possibility of two positions, one in Dortmund and one in Hamburg. We went first to friends in Dortmund, but after a week I thought, no, this is not the right place for me. It was an academy of music, but I had no organ to practice so it was a problem for me. So then, we went to Hamburg where there were organs and one month later I was the organist at St. Jacobi. They had wanted me to come a half year before since my recital there, but it couldn’t be done any faster.

St. Jacobi is the home of the 1694 Arp Schnitger organ, which was to become famous during succeeding decades. It had been saved from destruction in the Allied bombing of Hamburg by the foresight of church officials who removed the pipes and mechanisms to a safe location.

It was at this time that I met Mr. Howes: Arthur Howes, from Baltimore. I played a recital when he died. He came with the American organbuilder, Charles Fisk, who had built an organ in Baltimore. I showed them all the organs in Hamburg. Mr. Fisk was interested in the pipes and examined them carefully. A year later they invited me to play in America. My first performance was in Baltimore on the new organ and then Mr. Howes arranged for me to play at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall in Methuen, Massachusetts. A year later I came back and did a master class in Andover.

Heinz Wunderlich’s schedule was very busy once he began playing at St. Jacobi. By necessity, he played an important part in overseeing the restoration of the large four-manual Schnitger organ. He established the Kantorei St. Jacobi, a 100-member mixed chorus that sang at services and gave concerts. They had an extensive repertoire ranging from Bach and Mendelssohn to Stravinsky. The choir made several tours under Wunderlich’s direction, including one to the United States in the fall of 1978. Concurrently with the St. Jacobi position, Wunderlich was also Professor of Organ and Improvisation at the College of Music in Hamburg. Wunderlich did much promotional work for the important St. Jacobi organ as well. His recitals devoted to cycles of works by Bach and North German composers; his summer “Schnitgerfest,” a summer series of recitals; his authoring a book about the organ; and hosting the endless stream of visitors to the organ loft, all helped to underscore the importance of the organ.

Max Reger
In the years between 1960 and 1970, Wunderlich oversaw the building of another organ for St. Jacobi that would be ideally suited for 20th-century music and particularly the music of Max Reger. Wunderlich studied the music of Reger with a close friend of Reger, Karl Straube, and as a result is one of the few organists in the world today who is in a direct line of succession with Reger. Reger has remained one of Wunderlich’s passions—performing Reger’s music and writing about him (see The American Organist, March 2002). The year 1973 brought the centenary of Reger’s birth, and during three days of a Reger festival at St. Jacobi, Wunderlich performed all of the large compositions, taught a master class, and directed a festival service. I asked Professor Wunderlich if he played all of Reger’s works.

No, no. He wrote more music than Bach. Look, I have all the works of Reger. [He goes over to a long bookshelf and takes about half the books off one shelf.] His early pieces look easy, but they get more difficult. He also has many unimportant works so you have to see what is important.
With Reger’s pieces there are many problems; there are things which cause misunderstandings. For example, his Allegro should be much slower than an Allegro for other composers. Reger himself says “Don’t play my pieces too fast. The tempos we wrote down are much too fast; play everything quite steadily, even if faster is indicated!”
It is also necessary in Reger that you hear everything. You have to hear every change; that is important. Sometimes the changes occur every 16th note and if it is played too fast, it becomes confusing.

The early years at St. Jacobi were very busy years, and by Wunderlich’s own admission he was unable to compose much:

From 1957 to about 1980 I was very busy with my choir and I played all over the world and I simply did not have time for composition; it was impossible to write pieces. After that, I did not have a choir and, although I taught at the Hochschule, I had more time to compose.
In 1982, Wunderlich lost his wife, Charlotte, to cancer. It was also in that year that he decided to resign his post at St. Jacobi, although he continued to teach at the Hochschule. Wunderlich’s large-scale organ work, Hiroshima, dates from 1978 and is based on a theme given him by György Ligeti. Ligeti, also a professor at Hamburg’s School of Music, would often give Wunderlich themes for his improvisations. This piece is based on one of those themes.

Marriage to Nelly
The two decades following 1982 were productive ones for Wunderlich. He married Nelly Söregi, a violin professor at the School of Music, in November of 1984. Thus began a professional musical relationship that was to span two decades, until Nelly’s untimely death in January of 2004. Nelly was born in Budapest, Hungary and fled to Austria in 1945. Later she was to move to Hamburg, where she taught violin at the Hochschule. Nelly was a concert violinist of international stature, and she and Heinz concertized extensively throughout the world, and also made a number of recordings together. They can be credited with creating an awareness of the organ/violin sonatas of Rheinberger and Kodály.

Compositions
In 1988, Wunderlich wrote the Introduction and Toccata on BACH. In the 1990s there followed Dona nobis pacem, Sonata on Jona, Variationa Twelvetonata (violin and organ), and Emotion and Fugue. The Dona nobis pacem was written for the 1000th anniversary of St. Wolfgang.

The piece commemorated 1000 years after the death of St. Wolfgang. In Germany, he was a famous bishop who worked for freedom for Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary in a bad time of war. I wrote the piece for the Community of St. Wolfgang in Austria.
The original version was written for violin and organ, but Wunderlich also wrote a version for organ solo.
One very interesting piece, a monumental work dating from 1996, is the Sonata über den Psalm Jona. Unlike many of the earlier pieces that are developed around a particular musical form, Jona is a programmatic work dealing with the separation that was Jonah’s when he fled from God. The piece even includes in its preface the plea from Jonah as he lay in the belly of the whale. The piece is terrifying in its impact. However, when I discussed it with Professor Wunderlich, he had this to say,

It is not about a fish! You are born, how would you say, reborn. You are in death and you are reborn anew. It is the story of Christ; the story of Easter.

Concerts and teaching
Heinz Wunderlich is a concert organist of international stature. He has played concerts in virtually every civilized country in the world, including 23 tours in the United States alone. In more recent years he has concertized extensively in former Eastern bloc countries. He has also performed for radio, television, and film. His list of CDs is extensive. As a result, Wunderlich’s name has attracted organ students from all over the world, and that list reads like a Who’s Who in the organ world. Without exception, former organ students found him to be patient and kind and sensitive to their needs. A former American organ student, Nancy Boch-Brzezinski, had a typical response:

I enjoyed him as a teacher because of his musicality. Nothing he ever played was boring or unattainable. He found the fire, excitement and beauty in every piece he played. I learned technically from him by watching him, though my German was not great in the beginning. With music, the language barrier doesn’t get in the way.3
Invariably, students recall Wunderlich’s gentle corrections and his ability to demonstrate the most diverse pieces from the literature at a moment’s notice.

Legacy
His compositions are his legacy to each of us. As one begins to look at these works, one understands the depth and complexities of the music, the devices that the composer uses to such great effect, and the enormous contribution to 20th-century organ literature that is contained in the music. One sees the distance Wunderlich has come from the Romanticism of his teachers and is dazzled by the level where Wunderlich lives and performs. It is a place where most of us only dream. The influence of his organ works for the twentieth century is incalculable.

The music
Heinz Wunderlich has continued to prepare his works for publication. His publisher is Editio Musica Budapest, P.O. Box 322, H-1370, Budapest, Hungary. The works can be obtained through their U.S. agent Boosey & Hawkes, New York.

Heinz Wunderlich list of works
Kontrapunktische Chaconne g-Moll (EMB #Z13944), written in 1938 while still a student in Leipzig. The work is highly chromatic and in three sections, each using the chaconne theme. Free variations alternate with canonic variations in double counterpoint.
Praeludium und Doppelfuge im alten Stil (EMB #Z14246), written in 1939 at the beginning of the war while still a student of David. Both themes of the fugue are anticipated in the prelude, which is a highly canonical work.
Fuga Variata (EMB #Z13942), written in 1942 while Wunderlich was in the army. It owes its inception to Samuel Scheidt’s Variation Fugue. There are eight fugal variations in the Fuga Variata, all based on a four-bar theme. It is mildly chromatic and stays in C major throughout.
Partita über “Macht hoch die Tür” (EMB #Z14331), written in 1946 and dedicated to his first wife, Charlotte; this is a wonderful set of variations on the Advent tune “Fling Wide the Door.”
Mixolydische Toccata über “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” (EMB #Z13945) was written for Christmas 1948. It is neo-Gregorian in style and contains a complete statement of the chorale. The third section combines the lyrical Gregorian theme with the German chorale.
Orgelsonate über ein Thema (EMB #Z13946) was written in 1956 for Church Day. The three movements make use of the same thematic material, a falling chromatic phrase, albeit in totally different and highly original ways.
Sonata Tremolanda Hiroshima (EMB #Z13947) was written in 1984 and based on a theme given him by Ligeti. The theme was the perpetual mirror-canon from Ligeti’s La Grand Macabre. Two dodecaphonic themes are used in the work, one by Ligeti and the other by Wunderlich. The piece got its name from impressions Wunderlich had while on tour in Japan. He played the first performance in Hiroshima in 1985.
Introduktion und Toccata über Namen B-A-C-H (EMB #Z13943). Wunderlich wrote this mono-thematic work in 1988. Reminiscent of Liszt, it makes continual use of dynamic contrast. This piece was also arranged in 1990 by the composer for organ and orchestra (EMB #Z13948).
Konzert für Orgel und Orchester über den Namen B-A-C-H (Z.13948), written for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 3 trumpets in C, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 violins, viola, cello, contrabass, and organ, is based on Wunderlich’s Introduktion und Toccata über den Namen B-A-C-H for organ. However, it is a much enlarged score at more than twice the length of its corresponding piece for organ.
Invocatio “Dona nobis pacem” (organ solo version EMB #Z14039; violin and organ version EMB Z.14038). This prayer for peace was written in January 1993 especially for his wife, violinist Nelly Söregi-Wunderlich, and they have recorded it on an Organum Classics CD. A haunting melody opens and ends the work with a tremendous climax in the middle.
Sonata über den Psalm Jona (EMB #Z14108) was completed in 1996 and is based on a double twelve-note row. This programmatic work is in two sections—the first a cry of distress from the belly of the whale, and the second longer movement a ferocious toccata ending with a statement of the Easter hymn “Christ is risen.”
Variationa Twelvetonata (EMB #Z14325), written in October 1998, was dedicated to his wife Nelly Söregi-Wunderlich. This very expressive piece is for violin and organ and is an important addition to the literature for that combination. It is very expressive and contrasts the violin with differing colors of the organ.
Emotion und Fuge per augmentationem et diminutione (EMB #Z14364), written in 2002, follows the traditional organ form of prelude and fugue. Based on a theme given him by his teacher, Johann Nepomuk David, in 1940, it consists of ten notes in a chromatically descending line. The fugue contains this theme in its purest form. In the prelude, Wunderlich combines it with a theme of his own devising. Augmentation and diminuation are used throughout.

These works constitute the organ works of Heinz Wunderlich. He has, however, quite a large list of works for other combinations of instruments. A few that I am aware of are:

Graduale für Solo, kleinen Chor und Orgel (EMB #Z14365)
Kanonische Variationen für Klavier vierhändig
“Ein Psalm der Liebe” Variationen für Klavier (Hausmusik)
Introduktion und Chaconne über ein Zwölftonthema für Violine
Chaconne über ein Zwölftonthema für Flöte
Volkstümliches gesungenes Krippenspiel für Soli und Chor
Kantate “Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag” für Chor und Orchester
Kantate “Es kommt ein Schiff, geladen” für Chor, Blockflöte, und Streicher (Bären-
reiter-Verlag)
Weihnachtsgeschichte für Solo und Chor (Bärenreiter-Verlag)
Oratorium “Maranatha” zum Osterfest für Soli, Chöre und Orchester (Bärenreiter-Verlag 2111)
5 Motetten für Chor a cappella (Editio Musica Budapest)
Gesang der drei Männer im Feuerofen für Solo, Chor und Orgel
Kantate “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” für Solo, Chor und Orgel
7 Chorsätze (VEB Verlag Hofmeister Leipzig)
Ökumenische Messe für gemischten Chor (for mixed voices) (Editio Musica Budapest Z. 14 509)

Jay Zoller is organist at South Parish Congregational Church in Augusta, Maine, where he plays the church’s historic 1866 E. & G. G. Hook organ. He holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the School of Theology at Boston University. 

A retired designer for the Andover Organ Company, he currently designs for the Organ Clearing House and for David E. Wallace & Co. Pipe Organ Builders of Gorham, Maine. Zoller resides in Newcastle, Maine, with his wife Rachel.

In addition to writing several articles about Heinz Wunderlich for The American Organist, Choir & Organ, and The Diapason, he has played in all-Wunderlich recitals in Hamburg, Germany in 1999, 2004, and 2009. His article, “An Organ Adventure in South Korea,” appeared in the December 2011 issue of The Diapason.

Heinz Wunderlich died March 10, 2012 (see “Nunc Dimittis,” The Diapason, May 2012, pp. 10, 12). He served for many years as music director at St. Jacobi in Hamburg and as professor of organ and improvisation at the Hamburg College of Music. He concertized throughout the world, including several tours with his choir, the Kantorei St. Jacobi. In the United States alone he made twenty-six tours. Students came from all over the world to study with him—many to study the works of Max Reger, as Wunderlich was one of the few musicians in a direct line of succession with Reger. 

Wunderlich left an extensive body of organ works, as well as choral music. He remained active as a recitalist until his 91st year, when he decided not to play any more. See “Heinz Wunderlich at 90,” by Jay Zoller, The Diapason, April 2009, pp. 19–21; “80th Birthday Tribute—Heinz Wunderlich,” by David Burton Brown, The Diapason, April 1999, p. 18; “Heinz Wunderlich at 74,” by David Burton Brown, The Diapason, April 1994, p. 6; and “The Published Organ Works of Heinz Wunderlich,” by David Burton Brown, The Diapason, April 1994, pp. 12–13.

Beginnings

As a sophomore in high school, after seven years of piano lessons, I began my study of the organ with the organist at my family’s church. My teacher, David Whitehouse, was also a student—at the University of New Hampshire—and he did his best to impart to me the correct methods of playing the organ. In addition, he stimulated my interest by taking me, even before I had my own driver’s license, to hear concerts on the large organ at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall, which was about an hour’s drive away from my home in Durham.

My recollection of many of those recitals is hazy at best, often sitting in the front row so I would have a ringside seat—watching was as important to me as listening. However, one Friday night stayed in my memory like no other: October 20, 1961 at 8:30 pm—the program, which I saved, reads: Heinz Wunderlich, Organist, Jacobikirche, Hamburg. From my front-row seat on the right-hand side, I was transfixed as his program proceeded: Buxtehude, Prelude and Fugue in E Minor; Bach, Trio Sonata III in D Minor and Toccata and Fugue in F Major. After intermission he played his own Sonata on a Single Theme, a piece which, little could I imagine at the time, I would know intimately later in my life. Wunderlich ended his program with the Reger Fantasie and Fugue on B-A-C-H. For whatever reasons, the image I had of him there would remain with me.

1989  

My story now jumps ahead nearly thirty years. I was working for the Andover Organ Company in Methuen, Massachusetts, designing pipe organs. We had just finished a small two-manual organ of my design for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in North Andover, Massachusetts. Unknown to me, Heinz Wunderlich had been engaged for the dedication recital through his friendship with Arthur Howells. In addition to the recital, a masterclass was to be held the day before. I was one of five or six people who offered to play. I did not realize this was the man that I had heard play so many years before. Nor did I think about the fact that he was a recognized authority on the music of Bach! So, imagine my embarrassment when I played the C Major Prelude and Fugue of Johann Ludwig Krebs rather than Bach. 

Despite being unfamiliar with the music, Professor Wunderlich was most gracious and offered helpful advice on many aspects of the piece. I still have his markings in my score. I was fortunate to see a program of the next day’s recital and noticed that it included one of his own pieces, the Sonata on a Single Theme. I asked him about his music and if it was published. Alas, nothing was published at that time, but he was very kind and brought me a cassette recording of some of his organ works. When I listened to it later, I was hooked! It became one of the most listened-to recordings in my collection. The music had a clear crispness to it; it was a fresh sound—a controlled wildness made it come alive for me. I couldn’t stop listening. It sounded the way contemporary organ writing ought to be.

I waited, hoping that it was being published, and finally wrote to Professor Wunderlich roughly two years later. I identified myself as the person who had played Krebs for him that day. Yes, he remembered me. And, yes some of the organ works were now published. I immediately ordered every one. The first piece that I learned was the very one I had heard him play, the Sonata on a Single Theme. I quickly discovered how difficult the music actually was.

I should say that my correspondence with Professor Wunderlich began late in his career. He had retired in 1982 and was devoting his time to concertizing and preparing his many compositions for publication. There was no reason that he needed to be kind to an unknown American who had somehow converted to his music so late in life. But, sometimes things work out differently than you expect. I wrote to him and told him what I was working on, asking questions about the music and the way he wanted it performed. Occasionally, I even discovered a wrong note in the score. I would send him my recital programs when I had included a piece of his and he always answered; and at the same time he answered my questions and thanked me for my interpretation of his music. 

Over the years I played quite a few of his pieces, even playing one lunchtime all-Wunderlich concert. As 1999 grew near, Wunderlich asked me if I would write an article about him in honor of his approaching 80th birthday. I did so and my article “Heinz Wunderlich at 80” appeared in the April 1999 issue of The American Organist. I had also made the decision to travel to Hamburg, Germany for his birthday celebrations and so bought my ticket expecting to have a relaxed trip. 

Birthday celebrations

I had played the Fuga Variata in a recital two months before my scheduled trip, but had no inkling of the phone call I was about to receive, literally the day before I was to leave. Heinz Wunderlich called from Germany to say that the organist who was scheduled to play the Fuga Variata was unable to do so, had backed out, and would I be willing to play? I was soon to discover that Wunderlich’s birthday celebrations consisted of many concerts over the period of nearly two weeks. In 1999 Heinz Wunderlich played an all-Bach recital on the Arp Schnitger organ at St. Jacobi; five days later he played another all-Bach program of harpsichord and violin with his violinist wife, Nelly, at the Museum of Art. One day later was an all-Wunderlich program played by former students at the Domkirche St. Marien on the four-manual Beckerath organ. And finally, on May 8 Heinz Wunderlich played an ambitious program of Reger and Wunderlich at St. Michaelis.

Without promising anything, and with my heart in my throat, I said I would bring my music and organ shoes and we would see what happened. When I arrived, I practiced for a couple of days on Wunderlich’s own three-manual organ, which was in the lower level of his home. I was still feeling insecure about the music when Wunderlich came down and wanted to hear the piece. In my nervousness, I must have played very badly, but he was always kind and offered suggestions. Finally, he took me to St. Mariens for a lesson on the large Beckerath organ. The organ was located in a rear gallery, which must have been 30 feet off the main floor. He would help me set up registrations and then take the long walk down to the main floor to listen. Returning to the gallery, we made changes, and moved to the next section, always checking on what it sounded like downstairs. I learned a lot about his ideas of registration and playing in an acoustically live building. Heinz Wunderlich was very precise. He wanted all of my old markings erased. Changes and balances were carefully worked out as well as precise fingerings, paying attention to every marking in the score.

I was thankful for the time and attention he was willing to give me, all this at the age of 80 and having several concerts of his own to prepare. At the same time it was terrifying to be performing with the composer himself sitting in the audience. For me it was the experience of a lifetime.

Later that year, I arranged an American tour for him. It included five concerts at churches where former students were playing and a concert at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall where I had heard him play 38 years before. Among other things, he played his newly composed Sonata über Jona; his wife Nelly joined him for his Variationa Twelvetonata for Violin and Organ, also newly composed, and some Rhein-berger sonatas for violin and organ, which brought tears to my eyes. For his 85th birthday in 2004 I wrote another article about him, this time published in Choir & Organ magazine, and once again traveled to Hamburg to play his newly written Emotion and Fugue in the all-Wunderlich program. This program was again on a large four-manual Beckerath, but this time in St. Petri, where former student Thomas Dahl is the director of music. Again, Heinz Wunderlich was of great assistance with interpretation and registration. 

In 2009, for Wunderlich’s 90th birthday, I again played the Fuga Variata on the St. Petri organ along with other former students. Although Professor Wunderlich was noticeably frail, he still played an ambitious recital on the Kemper Organ at St. Jacobi. Unfortunately, it was the last time I would hear him play. 

Epilogue

For me, knowing Heinz Wunderlich, one of the 20th century’s greatest virtuosos, became a transforming event in my life. To know the man, the gentle teacher, the consummate musician, the loving husband and father, gracious host, and the appreciation he had for my performances and articles, was reward in itself. But the real transformative aspect was the music. My interest in contemporary music expanded tenfold. His organ works alone have occupied me for over 20 years and constantly present me with ever-new challenges. In addition, I have been able to listen to performances of works that I will never play—works for organ and orchestra, for chorus, and his masterful improvisations. His interest has also given me the chance to travel to Germany and perform on organs that I had only dreamed of, as well as make many new friends. Thank you, dear man. I miss you.

--David Burton Brown is organist at Idlewild Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tennessee

How does one mark the birthday of a musician with 80 very productive years? Here is an attempt to outline the 80-year life of Professor Heinz Wunderlich, who will enter the decade of octogenarian on April 15, 1999. Professor Wunderlich is a concert organist extraordinaire, has recorded more than once the entire organ works of Bach and Reger, is known as a composer of organ and choral music, is a superb teacher,  and is loved and honored as husband,  father, and grandfather.

Heinz Wunderlich was born in Leipzig, Germany on April 25, 1919. No stranger to the wonderful musical tradition of Leipzig, which includes such giants as J.S. Bach and Felix Mendelssohn, Wunderlich was lucky to have come from an exceptionally musical family. Both of his parents had musical backgrounds. His great, great grandfather was a musician; one great grandfather and another immediate grandfather were teachers of piano. Wunderlich remembers an aunt in his mother's family who was a professional singer; she also studied extensively in Leipzig. Relatives also include a cousin of his mother who was a conductor in Prague. Following early study at the piano with his own father, Wunderlich was placed in the piano studio of Joachim Voigt, who was the organist in the family parish church. Composition began at age 15. Once accepted as the youngest student ever to the Academy of Music in Leipzig, Heinz Wunderlich studied organ with Karl Straube and composition with Johann Nepomuk David.

An early dismissal from military service due to sickness in 1943 brought Wunderlich to the Moritz Church in Halle, the city of Handel's birth, where he was established as Church Musician until 1958. He also taught at the State Church Music School in Halle. Wunderlich and his first wife Charlotte had three children and seven grandchildren; Charlotte Wunderlich died in 1982. In 1958, Wunderlich and his family escaped to West Germany. He assumed the position as Director of Music at St. Jakobi Church, Hamburg, where he presided over the large Schnitger organ. At the same time, Wunderlich taught at the Staatliche Hochschule in Hamburg. Later he married a second time, to Nelly Sorgei-Wunderlich, a famous violinist from Budapest. Together they have performed extensively in the USA, Russia, Poland, and other eastern lands.

In the United States, Heinz Wunderlich is known primarily as a concert organist. Internationally known in this capacity, Wunderlich makes the seemingly impossible appear to be easy with his facility for performing large scale works with clarity and formal understanding. As a teacher, Wunderlich is patient, yet demanding. Having studied with him myself for a year, two full summers, and several individual lessons, I feel privileged to have been able to learn various organ works at his hand. Always teaching by pedagogical demonstration, rather than merely talking about the music, Wunderlich is careful to assist the student in sensing the formal structures of large works. In so doing, the student develops an intuitive sense of phrasing and articulation and can later dissect by himself large Romantic works of composers like Reger, Reubke, Liszt, and Rheinberger.

Let us then wish Professor Heinz Wunderlich a most joyous HAPPY BIRTHDAY--80 YEARS! It is my hope that the American organ establishment will better acquaint themselves with this marvelous man, who for nearly four decades has played concert tours in the USA, trained a host of students around the world, glorified God and the organ by contributing brilliant new works for his instrument, and given us a better sense of the organ music of his native land!

Jay Zoller is organist at South Parish Congregational Church in Augusta, Maine, where he plays the church’s historic 1866 E. & G.G. Hook organ. He holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the School of Theology at Boston University. He is a retired designer for the Andover Organ Company and currently designs for the Organ Clearing House. He resides in Newcastle, Maine, with his wife Rachel. Zoller, as a high school student in 1961, was fortunate to hear Heinz Wunderlich play at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall on Wunderlich’s first American tour. They began a professional relationship in 1989, when Zoller played in a masterclass that Wunderlich was giving. Since then, Zoller has studied some of the Wunderlich organ works with Professor Wunderlich and has performed many of his organ compositions in recital. In addition to writing several articles about Wunderlich for The American Organist, Choir and Organ, and The Diapason, he has played in all-Wunderlich recitals in Hamburg, Germany in 1999, 2004 and now again in 2009. His article, “Heinz Wunderlich at 90,” appeared in the April 2009 issue of The Diapason.

Birthday concerts in Hamburg
My wife, Rachel, and I flew out of Newark on Thursday, April 23, and landed Friday morning at Tegal Airport in Berlin, Germany. Our friend Matthias Schmelmer, who will be important later in this story, helped us to the Hauptbahnhof. There we took a fast train for the two-hour ride to Hamburg, where the birthday celebrations were to take place. As one of the recitalists, I had been given an hour and a half of practice time on Friday evening the 24th, and an hour the next morning to prepare for the first concert, which was to take place on Wunderlich’s birthday itself, April 25. There were five other organists participating, as well as a vocal ensemble, so the time we had available was limited and valuable.
I was to play the Fuga Variata, a piece Wunderlich had written in 1942 during the war. Suffering from jet lag and with my wife practically falling asleep beside the console, I found the allotted time barely enough to register the piece. After a night of rest, I was looking forward to my hour of practice the next morning. Imagine my surprise when, arriving in the balcony, the performer practicing before me said that we had a cipher on the Hauptwerk. Luckily, we found a key to the organ case, and I was able to fix the problem. My years of organbuilding came in handy!
The four-manual Beckerath organ in St. Petri had been completely rebuilt by the Schuke Organ Co. since my visit five years ago. Several new stops were added to make the choruses more complete, along with a new console and, most welcome, a new solid-state system with multiple memories; all was done in keeping with the Beckerath sound.
Unlike many churches in the USA, German churches have hard surfaces within large spaces, and refrain from using carpeting. As a result, the sound is unlike almost anything you hear in this country. I gauged the reverberation in St. Petri to be 6 to 8 seconds—long enough to require some adaptation in one’s playing to allow for it.
The performance of “Former students playing music of Heinz Wunderlich” went very smoothly. The Kontrapunktische Chaconne was played by Dörte Maria Packeiser (Heidenheim, Germany); next I played the Fuga Variata; a chorus under the direction of Cornelius Trantow sang Four Motets for unaccompanied chorus; Izumi Ikeda (Fukuoka, Japan) played the Sonata Tremolanda Hiroshima; Andreas Rondthaler (Hamburg) played Dona Nobis Pacem with violinist Solveigh Rose; Emotion and Fugue was played by Eva-Maria Sachs (Erlangen); and the program ended with Orgelsonate über ein Thema played by Sirka Schwartz-Uppendieck (Furth). As in subsequent concerts, the church was full and the audience enthusiastic. All the performers ended the evening with dinner at a local restaurant with Professor Wunderlich.

Ökumenische Messe
The next day, Sunday, a performance of the Wunderlich Ökumenische Messe (Ecumenical Mass) took place as part of the morning service at St. Petri. It was sung by the Hamburger Bachchor St. Petri under the baton of the St. Petri music director, Thomas Dahl. This is a very effective setting of the Mass for a cappella choir, and the experienced chorus of St. Petri made it memorable. The music was soaring and lyrical, with suggestions of Gregorian chant, and put me in a contemplative frame of mind.
Sunday afternoon we toured an amazing exhibit of the works of Edgar Degas at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, followed in the evening with dinner at the home of Thomas Dahl with his wife Steffi and their two delightful daughters. We were able to inspect the two-manual Fürer organ in the little village church of St. Nicholas next door, where Thomas is able to practice. Although a much smaller church than St. Petri, the beautiful interior of wood and plaster is sympathetic with the organ, making a clean and distinct sound.
After being tourists on Monday, we boarded a train on Tuesday for Bremen where we toured again, the highlight being the St. Petri Church—a huge, garishly painted cathedral, possessing four organs. In the main part of the sanctuary is the large Sauer organ originating from 1893. During several rebuilds, it has been enlarged to its present four manuals and 98 registers. A three-manual Bach Organ was built in 1966 and sits primly in a side aisle balcony. The remaining two organs are a one-manual Silbermann Positiv from 1732/33 and a one-manual and pedal Wegscheider organ from 2002, which accompanies the choir.

Wunderlich’s 90th birthday concert
Following an afternoon in the contemporary art museum, we returned to Hamburg in time for Heinz Wunderlich’s recital at St. Jacobi in the evening. The recital was played on the Kemper organ, which has been restored since my last visit five years ago. The church is also the home, of course, of the famous Arp Schnitger organ, which dominates the end of the church in the second balcony. The Kemper sits on one side of the lower balcony. Professor Wunderlich chose four pieces for his program: Bach, Präludium und Fuge in h-Moll, BWV 544; Wunderlich, Sonata Tremolanda Hiroshima; Reger, Fantasie und Fuge über B-A-C-H, op. 46; and Wunderlich, Sonata über den psalm Jona.
Professor Wunderlich’s playing, at ninety, is still immaculate, and the Kemper was appropriate for the music on the program. Although I have heard the Schnitger organ on several occasions and have played it myself, I couldn’t help but wish that we could have heard the Bach on the Schnitger organ instead. In any event, American recitalists should acquaint themselves with all of Wunderlich’s music, as it is of the highest quality.

Organ and orchestra
On Wednesday evening, we gathered at St. Petri again for the final Wunderlich birthday concert, a program for chorus, organ, and orchestra. Thomas Dahl had a demanding evening with the Organ Concerto No. 7 in B-flat Major, op. 7, no. 1, of Georg Friedrich Handel; Heinz Wunderlich’s Easter cantata, Erschienen ist der herrliche Tag, written in 1992; the premiere performance of Wunderlich’s Concerto for Organ and Orchestra on the Name B-A-C-H; and Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42, “Wie der Hirsch schreit,” op. 42. The soprano soloist was Dorothee Fries and the organist Andreas Rondthaler. The chorus was once again the Hamburger Bachchor St. Petri. The evening was exciting, with the Wunderlich Concerto being only one of many highlights for me.
One other Hamburg organ that deserves mention is in the Church of St. Georg. The church, which is dedicated to the Trinity, was built in 1747 and destroyed by bombs in 1943. Only the damaged steeple remained, which was repaired, and a new church, representative of 1950s architecture, was built. The sanctuary, which was designed to serve the purpose of a concert hall as well, seats 700 people, has galleries large enough for an orchestra, and boasts a 1959 E. F. Walcker & Co. organ with 36 registers.

Berlin
On Thursday morning, we boarded the train for our trip back to Berlin. Having never been to Berlin, I wasn’t sure that I was going to like it, but we found the city a delight, with the transit easy to get around on, and more things to see than we could possibly include in our remaining week. The city has been rebuilt, and like Hamburg, construction seems to be going on constantly.
Our friend, Matthias Schmelmer, is the director of music and organist at Kirche zum Heiligen Kreuz (the Church of the Holy Cross) in Berlin. Thanks to his many contacts, I was able to see and play more organs than I ever would have on my own. The largest is the Sauer organ in the Berliner Dom. The cathedral itself is an impressive building, with a dome reminiscent of St. Paul’s London or St. Peter’s Rome, and the organ is equally impressive. At 7,000 pipes and 113 registers on four manuals and pedal, it is one of the largest in Germany. Once I determined that the swell pedals worked opposite to ours in the USA and that the Great is the lowest manual, I was off for an enjoyable evening.
The organ built for Princess Amalia in 1755 by Peter Migendt and Ernst Marx was the next instrument on our agenda on Monday morning. It had had several homes since it was built, but is now located in the Berlin Karlshorst. The organ is awaiting restoration in the fall, but is completely playable in its small church. It has two manuals and pedal with 25 stops. The sound is clear and bright, and the reeds, which were added in 1960, are compatible with the time period. A complete delight!
Monday afternoon brought us to Schmelmer’s own church, with its rather unique, for Germany, E. & G. G. Hook organ. Much has been written about this 19th-century American transplant from Woburn, Massachusetts, and I won’t add to that now. Suffice it to say that it has a wonderful new home in a very live building. The building itself is unique in that a steel structure has been added internally, with catwalks around the central area so one can walk around the church at the balcony level. Built in behind arches throughout are glassed-in offices and conference rooms that look out on the sanctuary proper. In the center of the church and extending up into the dome is a large tent hanging by ropes or cables. I can only imagine that it is to deaden the reverberation somewhat.
Across the street in a quiet cemetery lies the grave of Felix Mendelssohn. We spent several meditative moments at his graveside and that of his sister, Fanny and her husband, William Hensel.

Leipzig and Dresden
On Tuesday we fulfilled a lifelong desire of mine, to visit the churches where J. S. Bach worked for the last decades of his life. Although we did not hear the organs in either St. Nicholas or St. Thomas, we sat enjoying the atmosphere and were able to pay our respects at the grave of the greatest of composers. Later, we walked to the home of Felix Mendelssohn, which is not far away, and got a taste of his home and life. Of particular delight were his drawings and watercolors displayed there.
We had also wanted to visit Dresden and were glad we did. After a bus tour around the city, we found our way to two churches that showed two different methods of reconstruction. The Kreuzkirche had been completely burned out during the fire bombing of February 13, 1945. The church, which seats 3,200, was rebuilt in a simple style and rededicated on February 13, 1955. The raw plaster walls, which were intended as a temporary measure, were kept as a reminder of the night of terror when tens of thousands of Dresden people were killed. The great Jehmlich organ, which was destroyed, was replaced by a new Jehmlich organ of 76 registers and four manuals and pedal.
The restoration of the Frauenkirche was finished in 2005 and was completed in exquisite and loving detail. It is an almost unbelievable place, with its marbleized and gold-leafed surfaces, exquisite colors, central altar of which 80% had been saved from the rubble, and glorious organ. We were fortunate that as we walked in, the new organ built by Daniel Kern, with four manuals and pedal and 67 registers, began to play. As the organist demonstrated the instrument, we sat overwhelmed by the sound and the beauty of the space around us. (See Joel H. Kuznik, “Dresden’s Frauenkirche: Once a Silbermann, Now a Kern,” in The Diapason, February 2006.)

Max Reger’s organ
The last organ I played in Berlin was ordered and designed by Max Reger. In 1913, the acquisition of an organ was planned for the Schützenhaussaal, where Max Reger was conductor of the ducal orchestra. Since Reger wished to have a movable console, the contract was signed with Steinmeyer, the only company capable of the work at the time. Reger ordered the organ very informally using only a post card!
The organ was built for Reger, and in the end he was satisfied with the results. The dedication recital was played by Karl Straube on April 19, 1914. Unfortunately, illness forced Reger’s resignation soon afterward, and so he only played it for the Duke’s funeral on June 26. In August, World War I began and the organ wasn’t used any more. Today the organ sits in the Weihnachtskirche (Christmas Church), which began as a community hall. The room is not large, and the organ speaks from behind wood latticework directly and loudly into the space. It was an exciting experience to sit at the console where Reger and Straube sat!
In addition to organs, we visited many historical sites including remnants of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, and the Reichstag. Our primary interests were in the many museums that Berlin has to offer, however. One of the most outstanding for us was the Berggruen Museum with its large collection of Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Braque, and Giacometti. We highly recommend it.
We were reluctant to end this memorable trip with its concerts, organs, museums and serendipitous surprises.

1. Helmut Walcha: Nuit de Lumière may be ordered directly from the publisher, Jérôme Do Bentzinger, 8, Rue Roesselmann, F-68000 Colmar, France; Tel: 03 89 24 19 74; Fax: 03 89 41 09 57; E-mail: <[email protected]>.

Part 1 was published in the October 2007 issue of The Diapason.

Full disclosure
As this second section is more personal, the reader may indulge the author’s use of the first person singular. I first heard of Helmut Walcha through another mentor, Tui St. George Tucker, the late composer who not only taught me to play the recorder but was in some ways like a second, or alternate, mother. In my seventeenth summer, which I spent at Camp Catawba in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, where Tui directed the music, she simply instructed me, one day, to listen to recordings by Helmut Walcha, beginning with the six Trio Sonatas by Bach. At first I did not “get it.” Though years before I had been a choirboy and found the organ fascinating, I’d devoted neither systematic nor serious attention to its repertoire. I presumed that the recommended recordings would feature a grand but somewhat opaque, if not “muddy,” sound. It was a surprise, at first more puzzling than edifying, to be confronted with clearly inflected and articulated “chamber music” of a bell-like transparency and played, on historical instruments, in rather dry acoustics (e.g., the Schnitger organ “stored”—forever—in the village church of Cappel, north of Bremerhaven). Tui asked me not to be put off but to persist in listening. The revelation, my sudden epiphany of understanding and profound appreciation, came after the third or fourth try; now, I was hooked—as it turned out, for life.
The next spring, almost a year—and many Bach organ works—later, I wrote a fan letter to the player, asking him if, when next in Europe, I could meet him and hear him in person. Walcha replied that I should come to a Saturday afternoon service of Vespers at the Church of the Three Kings (Dreikönigskirche) in Frankfurt and let him know, in advance, both the date and my choice of two pieces; in my response, citing a date in September 1957, I asked for the chorale-prelude An Wasserflüssen Babylons (in 4 voices, cantus firmus in the tenor) and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor—and was amazed, of course, when, some months later—and without further correspondence—my father and I walked into this church, just across the Main river from the Frankfurt Cathedral, and found both of these works in prominent positions in the printed order of service!
On the gallery afterwards, he recommended that I continue my piano studies in New York and in about three years come to audition for him at the Hochschule für Musik (State Music Academy) in Frankfurt. Nothing was said about organ lessons—nor were there any. The organist of the church where I was then singing allowed me to practice regularly there, on his Austin, after showing me, “Here are the manuals, here are the stop tabs, here are the pedals—you use toes and heels, both.” Not until after completing memorization of the Orgelbüchlein in the first of my four years of study with Walcha did I confess to him that he was my first organ teacher—a revelation he seemed to take in stride (“I don’t object to capable virgin students”); while I did not have a B.A., most of his foreign students had master’s degrees and many were on Fulbright scholarships.
Subsequently visiting Europe every summer in the decades following 1966, I saw him each year, at home or in his vacation haunts, until 1989 (two years before his death). It is fair to say that we developed a friendship, and after his own retirement he continued to encourage my work and to take a vivid interest in what I told him of the gratifications and frustrations of church and academic life at home in America. Soon after his 70th birthday I rendered an oral translation to him of the first portion of this article, in the form in which it had then been published, and was naturally pleased that he found it (while likely somewhat more systematic than had he himself put pen to paper) a valid summary of his views and pedagogical emphases.
Crucial to this full disclosure are, I think, the years of study and decades of friendship and, perhaps more important (or unusual), the fact that it was not only the music of Bach but also specifically its interpretation by Helmut Walcha that, as it happened, both drew me initially to the pipe organ and, in the end, served to nourish a lifelong interest and commitment to this musical medium.

The biography
A first biographical study of the organist, entitled Helmut Walcha: Nuit de Lumière, appeared about two years ago (no date is given) in Colmar, France, edited and published by Jérôme Do Bentzinger and authored, in collaboration, by two French organists, Joseph Coppey and Jean-Willy Kunz. To many it may be surprising that theirs should comprise the first available major documentation of so un-Gallic a musician and musical thinker.The book itself offers a list of hundreds of works, by some 30 composers, comprising Walcha’s memorized repertoire, but not one is French nor even from outside of the German cultural sphere. M. Coppey got to know his subject during Walcha’s few trips to France—he visited the cathedral of Poitiers, dedicated the organ at St. Séverin in Paris, and recorded some of the Bach harpsichord music, including the violin sonatas with Henryk Szeryng, in that city, and did his second—stereophonic—round of Bach organ recordings at St. Pierre LeJeune in Strasbourg—while M. Kunz is the son of a deceased friend who had originally intended to collaborate with Coppey in researching and writing this biography.
The barely 200-page book has some puzzling oddities—it is printed in a font almost as large as that of the New York Times Large-Type Weekly (for the sight-impaired), contains no index, and speaks of Helmut Walcha, along with his wife and some of their friends, mostly on a first-name basis. At the same time, the work leaves nothing to be desired in terms of reverence and affection for its subject. The authors—who speak little English, although one of them knows a good deal of German—did extensive research in Germany, tracking down friends, colleagues, pastors, and students of the master and—especially valuable—some of Walcha’s former chamber music partners, still lucid but now largely “lost” to the world in senior citizens’ centers. They also elicited written testimonials from associates and admirers, including from within the French cultural sphere (e.g., L. Rogg, M. Chapuis, R. Saorgin, M. Schaefer).
Praiseworthy and useful as these efforts and their results are, it can be said that the story told here really covers only the first half of Walcha’s life—the second half, after all, had a lot to do with the United States, via his 50 American students, of whom the evidence provided here is quite spotty. So far as I know, I am the only American student with whom the authors spoke. Among the others, those omitted here, in the published “non-exhaustive” list of students, include Robert Anderson, David Bowman, Edgar Billups, Virginia Banfield Bollinger, Edward Brewer, Larry Cook, Elise Cambon, Paul Davis, Melvin Dickinson (Margaret got in!), Sheila Beck Dietrich, Delbert Disselhorst, Tony Godding, Barbara Harbach, Philipp Isaacson, Gene Janssen, Lorna DaCosta McDaniel, Margaret Mueller (John did make it), David Mulbury, Doris Parr, Edmund Shay, Bob Thompson, and Nancy Walker! It was good to see in print the names of Frankie Cunningham and Betty Steeb (both among the students sent over early on by the late, and great, Arthur Poister), as well as that of Oberlin’s David Boe (who married the second daughter of Walcha’s pastor, Pfarrer Paulus North).
There is no sign of the three South African students, including composer Jacobus Kloppers (now in Canada) or Elise Feldtmann Liebergen. Among the Germans, Oda Jürgens (long active in Berlin) and Helmut Röhrig (who settled in Cincinnati) are missing—and, although composer Reinhold Finkbeiner did make it onto the list, there is no indication of his having been interviewed, which would quite likely have provided color and special interest in light of his outspoken dissent from aspects of Walcha’s aesthetics and pedagogy. Like Disselhorst, Charles Krigbaum is mentioned once (on page 141), as a contributor to the 70th-birthday Festschrift, but then, 18 pages later, omitted from the list. Yet it has to be said (at least here) that, as the Yale University organist for decades, Krigbaum would appear to have occupied the most prestigious position attained by any of Walcha’s students, anywhere.
The American and other omissions are particularly egregious inasmuch as Prof. Walcha himself often remarked (but never in France?) that of his best students a considerable number was to be found among the Americans. In addition, although the most intense wonder at Walcha’s prodigious memory and veneration for his interpretation and technique are expressed repeatedly, the biography lacks the sort of detailed analysis and explanation of these factors that readers would be justified in expecting such a book to attempt. In short, another biography—or at least a “Part Two”—will still be needed. The pictorial material in the book—much of it of an “exclusive” nature—is wonderful and, for those interested in acquiring such (even if nary an American be shown therein), probably worth the price of the volume. We are grateful to M. Bentzinger for the samples he has kindly provided for reproduction in these pages.1

The historical context
The historical context out of which Walcha and his interpretation emerged was that of the “Leipzig School” of the early 20th century. Thomas-Kantor Karl Straube stood at its center. His own life was marked by the transition from the late-19th-century extravagantly Romantic interpretation of pre-Romantic music to a new, disciplined and “ascetic” neo-Classicism that came to pervade certain, even large-scale, compositions by musicians like Stravinsky and Hindemith no less than the seemingly unrelated arts of organ-building and organ-playing. In Germany it was connected with the destructive caesura of World War I and the hopes aroused by formation of a new, Kaiser-less “Weimar Republic.” In any case it was clear that the old, complacent and hyper-bourgeois order was dead and nothing would ever be the same again; all was open to reconsideration.
In this context, and parallel to his friendships with outstanding late-Romantic musicians like Reger and Leipzig’s own Karg-Elert, Straube opened himself, “midstream,” to the growing interest in early organs and the interpretative concepts seemingly implicit in their structural features (tracker action; Werkprinzip; absence of facile electric playing aids; high mixtures and mutations; etc.). Neglected old instruments like the two Silbermann organs in Rötha, just outside of Leipzig, came to set new standards and, once newly playable and audible, imprinted their sonorities indelibly on the minds of aspiring and up-to-date musicians like the young Helmut Walcha.
In the unique atmosphere of “Weimar’s” creative ferment—soon to yield to the fanaticism of Nazism and the consequent pervasive chaos of the new German racial, foreign and military policies—it seems highly unlikely that Straube and his own finest pupil (and the next Thomas-Kantor) Günther Ramin, who, though only nine years older, became Walcha’s major teacher, could have reached the thorough, “chiselled” and, in time, “settled” concept of virtually every detail of interpretation that came to comprise Walcha’s accomplishment and, at least in terms of the applied interpretative method, his most specific organistic and musical emanation and legacy.
And yet Walcha, who studied theory with Reger’s conservatory successor Karg-Elert but was musically involved with the more neo-classical Leipzig composer Günter Raphael and his pupil Kurt Hessenberg (later Walcha’s beloved Frankfurt friend and colleague), attributed to Straube (under whose cantata-conducting in Bach’s Thomaskirche he sometimes played continuo) and, especially, to Ramin his life’s major organistic inspiration—along with that of Albert Schweitzer, through that scholar’s early study of both historical organs and the theological and pictorial symbolism in Bach’s music. In conversation it was, as Coppey and Kunz have noted, hard to elicit from him the specifics. Detective work, including carefully aimed examination of Straube’s correspondence, writings and editions and of Ramin’s recordings—perhaps leading to a musicologist’s future dissertation—might yet uncover the most critical points of both similarity and difference between Walcha’s concepts and those of his early Leipzig models. Lionel Rogg’s pronouncement of him as “original” implies, I think, that it was not only in Walcha’s sometimes ravishing sonorities that he may—or must—have diverged from his teachers.
In two somewhat ironic ways Helmut Walcha’s productivity was framed and promoted by misfortune. In his personal history, the poor eyesight and subsequent blindness (resulting from the teenager’s smallpox-vaccination calamity) served both to focus and enhance his musical ear and to promote the uniquely “horizontal” and minutely analytical method of learning (i.e., memorizing) polyphony voice by voice. In the history of his times, the need for safety from the World War II bombings of Frankfurt prompted Walcha’s flight to the tranquillity of the countryside, where he was able to learn, undisturbed by any urban distractions, the entire Well-Tempered Clavier, and doubtless to hone and solidify those more general interpretive concepts that would inform all his concerts, recordings and lessons.

Performing and recording
Among those who became familiar with Walcha’s recordings and were also fortunate to hear him in person, many perceived a subtle but unmistakable difference between the two musical experiences. My own observations confirmed the fairly consistent difference and I have, after considerable thought, concluded that it arose from different concepts operative in the artist in the two contexts. For Walcha a recording was foremost a documentation of the score, of the composer’s discernible intentions as objectively as possible—it was not intended to be, any more than could be avoided, a record, for eternity, of a particular moment in a particular performer’s life; not an attempt, that is, to artificially “freeze” such a subjective human moment beyond the composer’s already confirmed success in integrating an original experience, song and form into the enduring work of art. This extrapolation of mine is consonant with Walcha’s attitude toward improvisation; he was not opposed to subjectivity and certainly not to spontaneity—but these were of the moment, not of eternity. For this reason he did not improvise in concerts—i.e., in the “presence” of finalized masterful works—nor did he authorize the recording, the “eternalization,” of any of his thousands of glorious subjective and spontaneous liturgical expressions. Those of us allowed to partake of some of his “greater” ritards or other spontaneous rhythmic “bendings” of the moment, in an inimitable and unrepeatable interaction between him and a particular concert audience, would not ever wish to have missed them—yet nor would most of us desire to have such superimposed upon the documentation he chose to leave behind of his underlying, more objective conception.
In addition to the word Musiker, for musician, the German language includes a special word, Musikant, for the musician—the performer—who feels and transmits the experience of a beguiling spontaneity. Without any part of a doubt, Walcha was a Musikant as well as a Musiker—yet I can imagine him expressing a view that recordings are not an appropriate place for vagaries of Musikantentum. It is quite possible to believe, as many may, that, on the contrary, recordings, like all performance, can justly be about little else. To this premise I presume to venture no comparably axiomatic rejoinder. In departing this field of contention, however, it may be permissible also to pose a question: Is it possible that subjective spontaneous re-interpretations of particular musical passages, such as inevitably emphasize—more than is usual or ultimately justifiable—particular aspects of a work at the expense of others, may, however enchanting at the moment, when frequently reiterated through the objectification of recording, be perceived as grating and finally come to stand, rather than as mediators, as obstacles between the listener and the sensibility—as embodied in the work—of the composer?

The poet-singer—communication for the ages
In what I hope is only an apparent paradox, I hasten to affirm that of course the poet-singer in this great artist desired, especially in his work as an interpreter, to communicate with the hearts of fellow humans, both in the moment and across the ages. All the salient features of his performance—the singing, sometimes overlapping legato, interrupted by the “breathing” of the pipes simulating the human lung, the pointed staccato, the gravitas of portato, the nuanced virtuosity of leggiero touches, the accentuated highlighting of syncopations and of other rhythmic as well as harmonic tensions, the clear yet sensuous registrations as well as the illumination of form through their changes, the intriguing simultaneity of different articulations, and the “chiselled” or etched identification and re-identification of motivic structures and relationships—were applied to this end. One may differ about the degree of his success, but no one can properly gainsay Walcha the sincerity and intensity of his work toward two goals—of optimal communication with his listeners, and of endurance of the insights he believed to have achieved especially about the music of Bach and the conditions for its fullest realization.
This may be the place for three suggestive and all somewhat surprising quotations. It is no German, but René Saorgin, writing in French in his testimonial (on pg. 199) in the book by Messieurs Coppey and Kunz, who declares that “Helmut Walcha was quite certainly the greatest organist of our time.” Lionel Rogg, when I drove him from Kennedy Airport to New Haven some 35 years ago, told me plainly that “Walcha is a great romantic” (I don’t believe he meant it with a capital R, but rather that he was referring to the poetic intensity he felt communicated in Walcha’s renditions). And the late Robert Baker emerged from Walcha’s summer 1963 concert of pre-Bach masters on his then new Karl Schuke church organ to tell me, in considerable excitement, “He’s a colorist—like Clarence Dickinson!” (I don’t believe Bob really meant quite like Clarence Dickinson—but the colors he surely heard.)

Playing!
While seeking to zero in yet further on “what made Walcha Walcha,” it is useful to recall that over the centuries German philosophers—such as Schiller, Nietzsche and H. Marcuse—have repeatedly emphasized the relationship of play, and indeed the playfulness of the child, to the work of the “serious” artist. That art is always, to a significant extent, play, or that the artist’s “work” is, itself, a kind of play, was—contrary to a common false impression—well manifested in our subject. He had no children, but he took a lively interest in them, in particular in the children of his friends (e.g., making reference to them in occasional poems he wrote); he had a ready sense of humor, enjoyed funny stories and sported a hearty and infectious laugh; he identified better than many a musician with the more humorous elements in Baroque music, e.g., fresh, somewhat insolent repeated notes, or certain bold leaps, or fast—and jocular—alternating neighboring tones; he understood the provocative capriciousness of the stylus phantasticus passages in 17th-century music (though the term itself was not yet in common circulation); and he loved and liberally employed the airy playfulness intrinsic to many of the applications of high-pitched, “Baroque” flutes and principals, of mutations such as sundry fifths and thirds, and of bright Zimbel-type mixtures or Tertian combinations. It will be apparent, indeed, that this artist’s playfulness plays right on into our next subject.

The Walcha organ
Touring throughout Germany, as well as in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, England and France—and recording on historical organs—Walcha came to know an extraordinary number and variety of instruments. He could master, and more quickly so than most sighted musicians (and—also—later recall!), the intricacies of any console—the precise distance between manuals, the instrument’s specifications, and the locations of the stop (and of any combination) mechanisms, and the different structures among the key- and pedal-boards of new and old organs. Most importantly, he could always find, and usually did use—as was said of J. S. Bach—unconventional, hitherto untried combinations of stops, and he thus drew from most instruments sonorities previously unheard and yet uncannily apt for the composition to be realized. He looked always for emotional expression and warmth in addition to the clarity required for following the polyphony, and he certainly displayed no fear of a good tremulant.
By the end of the 1950s, in recognition of his sustained and extraordinary contributions to the cultural life of Frankfurt am Main, the city fathers determined to have built for installation in Helmut Walcha’s church an instrument of his own design and specifications. After Walcha, who had an excellent von Beckerath organ at his disposal in the large recital hall of the Hochschule, and who had enjoyed instruments by Karl Schuke in Berlin and elsewhere, apprised the city government that he would find either of these builders suitable for the Dreikönigskirche, the mayor and councillors arrived at a decision to afford special consideration to the delicate needs of the isolated city of West Berlin—i.e., for ongoing political, moral and financial support from West Germany—and thus, all else being equal, to award the commission to West Berlin’s Schuke (rather than to von Beckerath, of Hamburg in West Germany).
Following its dedication in 1961, and for the rest of his public musical life, this three-manual Schuke was Walcha’s “home” instrument. It is likely that he explored all of his then still current repertoire—notably including many 17th-century works as well as the late(st) works of Bach, including, e.g., the Art of the Fugue and the Musical Offering’s Six-Part Ricercar—with its resources. And of course he exploited it no end in delicious and brilliant free and chorale-related liturgical improvisations. The organ, while ample for the sympathetic room, was never over-aggressive, and featured a rich pedal palette complemented by a deeply resonant, (relatively) foundation-strong Hauptwerk, a lyrical Oberwerk with Krummhorn, and a bright and playful Brustwerk. Interestingly, however, this latter division includes no principal (a 2′ one would have been “normal”) and only a very high mixture, but instead features such (playful!) “gourmet specialties” as a 4′ Quintadena and a 4′ Regal!
I personally have found an interest in such stops elsewhere only in the work of the late M. Searle Wright, coming from a quite different aesthetic—as in his partial revision of the specifications of an organ Edwin Link had assembled and donated to the old chamber hall of S.U.N.Y. in Binghamton, Searle’s home town. Though I enjoyed (as did Robert Baker) Walcha’s idiosyncratic application of these sonorities in Frankfurt, I would (and recently did, on the Dreikönigs organ in its currently refurbished and very slightly altered condition) not find much use for them for my own musical purposes.
Yon Brustwerk division—by no means all bad!—does represent a triumph of Helmut Walcha’s playfulness (and his especially playful relationship to some of other composers’ and his own music) over certain organ-structural considerations that, for most other artists, would in the end take precedence . . . That, at least, is the only way that I can understand it. It was/is his instrument—and did/does he not deserve to have (had) it? A monument to playfulness—how many of those are there?■
This article will be continued.