Prelude and fugue in b minor BWV 544

00:00 Prelude with manuals at 8' and pedal at 16'
06:58 : Fugue
13:31 : a try (casual playing) of the Prelude with manuals at 16' and pedal at 32'

This upload is a try of "How could Bach sound on Annaberg's Walcker ???". The cobaye is the BWV 544 because it is a "massive" and somewhat hieratic PF. Pieces like this one or BWV 546 can seem a priori better suited to the Walcker than lighter things such as BW 541 or the concertos ; but this statement is pure prejudice and the experience is still to be done (are there volunteers ? :-)

As I'm not at all familiar with German romantic organs, the organ has been used in a very basic and rudimentary manner , and the organ in some way "dictated" the aim to make this PF sound majestic and massive. The tempi are, quite on the slow side - quasi-Schweizerian :-) - but they came spontaneously like that.

Concerning the registration, the Eule stops were included. After the fugue, there is a second version - casual playing - of the prelude with a manual 16' (the quintaton) and the 32' flue at the pedal (still more massive !).

This experience reminded me the controversy beetween Widor and Schweizer while they were elaborating their common Bach's edition for Schirmer. Schweizer advocated for using the manual reeds in Bach's PF and Widor was against reeds. After using this sample set and a Cavaillé-Coll's one, one can understand the reason of their respective opinions : Widor had the very strong French reeds in mind while Schweizer thought of German reeds - as Annaberg's ones - which add some colour to the sound but don't dominate the sound as French reeds would do. That's really a great feature of Hauptwerk than to allow amateur players to "touch by themselves" foreign organ cultures.

Last thing, it could be interesting to hear on this set some Bach played alla Straube ; but this requires an old Peters editions and overall a solid German culture in organ matters. Volunteers welcome :-)