These discs transport the listener back to 1736, the date of the Erasmus-Bielfeldt organ recorded here. Three years later Bach published the third part of his Clavier-Übung, an academically austere title which disguises one of his most symbolic and liturgically important cycles. He had high hopes for the commercial success of the volume and its successor, the Goldberg Variations.
The Clavier-Übung features the so-called Organ Mass. A Hymn Mass, it uses Lutheran texts and melodies in one major and several minor arrangements.
The two discs open and close with the Prelude and Fugue in E flat, BWV552. From the Prelude's first notes it's clear that Johannsen's playing is of the highest calibre. There's emotional involvement without a superfluity of ornamentation and rubato. Here, too, is tenderness, flamboyance, attack and rhythmic drive. In Johannsen's hands the listener is subtly drawn to the core of the music, its complexity simplified through his beautifully balanced registrations. Highlights include the extended prelude on Vater unser im Himmelreich, BWV682, and those on Aus tiefer Not, BWV686/687.
The Four Duets are stylistically related and unified through an ascending key sequence which, as the notes mention, represent the Passion, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. The superb booklet includes notes on the individual registrations employed. First-rate recording quality.