Müller-Hartung / Neuhoff: Organ Sonatas

This recording focuses on two late Romantic composers and their organ works. Carl Müllerhartung (1834–1908) must have been an accomplished organist. As a composer, he certainly utilized the capabilities of his instrument in a remarkable way. Particularly striking in the context of the time are his virtuosic demands on pedal technique. His sonatas are masterfully crafted in terms of motif and counterpoint, and they speak a consistent harmonic language that leads from Felix Mendelssohn to Franz Liszt. Müllerhartung's organ sonatas apparently found great recognition among his contemporaries. As part of the "First German Musicians' Day," a major organ concert took place on July 11, 1869, at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig. The program included: Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major, Robert Schumann's "Fugue No. 3 on B-A-C-H," Julius Reubke's Grand Sonata in C Minor "The 94th Psalm," and Franz Liszt's "Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H." To conclude this high-caliber program, Carl Müllerhartung performed his Organ Sonata No. 3 on "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." Franz Liszt wrote in a letter to the American company Mason & Hamlin: 'Müllerhartung has published some beautiful organ sonatas and plays them no less beautifully.' The organ sonatas of Ludwig Neuhoff (1859–1909) were placed by experts on a par with the works of masters such as Max Reger, who, according to the judgment of the time, had succeeded in creating a novel, symphonic, and at the same time contrapuntally crafted, profound contribution to organ literature. In contrast to those of his teacher Josef Rheinberger, Neuhoff's organ works tend toward the style of the "New German School" of Franz Liszt. After initial major successes, the sonatas disappeared from the organ repertoire for a long time; only in the course of the rediscovery of German organ romanticism were new editions of these works, which had been unjustly neglected for many decades, produced.