Because this is a budget CD, I mustn’t get too grumpy about the lack of information considered vital to an organ devotee on the accompanying notes. I cannot say where the recording was made or upon which instrument, but I can say that Hans Ole Thers is titulaire organist of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Copenhagen which boasts a 75 stop Marcussen organ, so let’s assume, for want of a better guess, that the recording was made there. And, because of his position, Hans Ole Thers must be seriously good.
You see, all too many Bach recitals seem to include the obligatory Toccata in d minor, to the point where some of us are weary of it, so an organist has to be lively and imaginative in interpreting it to cut the mustard. By far and away the best of many I own, are those of David Briggs at Truro Cathedral and Piet Kee at the famous Bavo. I recently heard Dame Gillian playing it on the radio, and until I heard the announcement at the end, I thought that someone had taken a leaf out of Piet Kee’s book because her performance had that little indefinable something extra.
Hans Ole Thers closely approaches the playing of the above three, and I have no doubt that were he sitting at the console of the Bavo with Ralph Couzens as his engineer, the presentation would be up a peg and most exciting.
The best part of this disc is the Partita, chorale and eleven variations, and previously, I had only heard Helmut Walcha playing this in an early 1950s recording at St Lauren’s, Alkmaar. So comparing scratchy old mono LPs with a modern CD is hardly fair, but a reasonable indication of interpretational differences may still be heard. The blind Helmut Walcha seemed to set a more relaxed tempo, and played with a little more intimacy. This was in keeping with the general taste and fancy of the time. The modern CD is much crisper, and the playing has rather more urge to it.
The closing BWV 560 is also well known, and my earliest introduction to it was in the 1960s, with Fernando Germani’s popular World Record Club disc, also recorded on the iconic St Lauren’s organ. (Piet Kee was appointed organist there in 1952, at the age of 25, by the way.)
Hans Ole Thers closely matched Germani in tempo, registration and general “presence”.
So, apart from the Partita, all pieces on this disc are well known, and it is a brave recording company that would risk marketing a disc with so much competition, as it were. I appreciate the fact that organists sometimes have to play what the recording company wants, and it seems that this good old warhorse is one of their favourites.
I bought the disc because it was inexpensive, and for the Partita. And on those counts, I am not disappointed.
Peter Wilding, December 2006
