Dreissig Kleine Choralvorspiele 01-10

Max Reger's “Dreissig Kleine Choralvorspiele” were written near the end of his life in 1914.
He had already written his elaborate big Choral Phantasies (1898-1899) and his other major organ works, except for opus 135b, the big Fantasie und Fuge in D minor.
It can be argued that in opus 135a he demonstrated the essence of his compositorial technique in a compact way. These little gems are not so much Choral Preludes as exquisitely set Choral Harmonizations. I guess we all played them in one time of our careers. In my humble opinion it's Reger at his best, though I do ofcourse like many of his other organ compositions.

I made it a rather personal interpretation. I did not always follow the annotations in the scores exactly. Same goes for tempo etc.
Reading a lot of articles about the performance of Reger's works made it clear to me, that the instructions he wrote with his pieces were not very conclusive. Karl Straube did not always follow them, nor did Reger himself. What remains of his own organ playing, recorded on WELTE pianola devices, only shows that he tended to play his own compositions at a leisurely pace. His metronome markings were often in double time. He made a lot of use of the general crescendo.

Many of the Chorales are still being sung in de reformed churches in Germany and Holland today.


These are the first 10:

01 Ach bleib mit deiner Gnade
02 Allein Gott in der Höh sei ehr
03 Alles ist an Gottes Segen
04 Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir
05 Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott
06 Eins ist Not; ach Herr, dies eine
07 Est ist das Heil uns kommen her
08 Es ist gewisslich an der Zeit
09 Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele
10 Grosser Gott, wir loben dich