BUXTEHUDE: Capricciosa (La) / Suite in G Minor

Album review

Glen Wilson performs only a small sampling of Buxtehude's keyboard works on this disc, but that sampling is enough to demonstrate why Buxtehude was so highly regarded in his day. Although Buxtehude's organ works are more famous, these harpsichord works have the same imaginative variety and sophistication. La Capricciosa, the most well-known work here, shows his facility for taking a simple melody and harmony and manipulating it so skillfully with different rhythms and modified melodic figures. The same is true, on a much smaller scale, with the chorale Auf meinen lieben Gott, which is transformed into the traditional Baroque suite of stylized dances. In the other works here -- the Toccata, the Preludes, the Suite in G minor, and the Canzonetta -- Buxtehude's improvisatory skills shine through, particularly in the way Wilson lets the music take him where it will. There are still some elements of structure in these, such as the fugal middle of the Prelude, BuxWV 163, but they otherwise have a jazzy freedom in their sound. They are not dense, cerebral, heavy pieces that demand close attention, nor are they pieces lightly tossed off. Wilson's performance lets the freely flowing inventive nature of the music take center stage.
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