Organ Music Vol.1

"This seven dollar CD exhibits some absolutely superb organ playing and sound, with a demo-grade capturing of recorded acoustic space, realistic envelopment, and up-front depth. There is no super-deep bass here, but the sound is clean as hell, and notably brilliant in the best Baroque tradition."
- Howard Ferstler, Sensible Sound, January/February 2002


"It is a fairly large three-manual organ in North German style with a clear and bright tone admirably suited to the works of Buxtehude. Larger registrations are brilliant and suitably aggressive but not strident, while the quieter registers offer wide variety of subtle colors heard to good advantage in the chorale preludes...the reading is so engaging."
- Elaine Fine, American Record Guide September/October 2001


"Naxos launches a survey of Buxtehude's complete organ works with a well-varied selection of chorale preludes, fugal works, and virtuoso showpieces. Volker Ellenberger's fluent technique and intelligent musicianship particularly come across in the chorale preludes and in larger-scaled works like the Magnificat primi toni (BuxWV 203), where the four fugues effortlessly emerge from their more freely conceived preceding episodes. The bassoon-like clarity of the pedal registration in the G major Prelude and Fugue BuxWV 147 helps move the music forward, as does Ellenberger's sharply etched phrasing in the fugue. The latter contrasts with Rene Saorgin's slower, more yielding (though no less valid) treatment. On the other hand, Saorgin's ebullient dash through the BuxWV 149 G minor Praeludium's introduction presents the music in a more improvisatory light compared to the shorter phrase lengths Ellenberger stresses.

"The 1997 organ of the Evangelical Lutheran City Church in Buckeburg, Germany benefits from clear and close-up engineering, similar to what producer Wolfgang Rubsam enjoyed in his fine (and sadly out-of-print) Buxtehude cycle recorded for Bellaphon in the early 1980s. Should the remaining releases in this series match Volume 1's high performance and engineering standards, we'll have a Buxtehude cycle on par with Saorgin's classic Harmonia Mundi recordings from the late '60s/early '70s."
10/10 Artistic/Sound quality
- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)