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Buxtehude Tercentenary

Buxtehude was the main focus of Colin’s solo harpsichord work in 2007.

The tercentenary of the great man’s death brought a surge of renewed interest in his music. Colin’s contribution was a series of concerts (including recitals by invitation, in his birthplace, Denmark, and his principal workplace, Lubeck in north Germany). These brought to listeners the magic of his small-scale keyboard works for harpsichord. As Nick Morgan commented (BBC Radio3, CD Review, December 2007) in Colin’s hands some of these show a gentle refinement, and an intimacy with the style of the 17th century French harpsichord masters, which we may not associate with the composer of grandiose and virtuosic organ music. But the variations (which include La Capricciosa – the precursor of Bach’s Goldberg variations) hold examples of the stylus fantasticus which rival the organ music for sheer excitement.
Colin’s CD (Buxtehude – Suites and Variations, SBCD207) has received several enthusiastic reviews, and is now available from this site.

Current projects

North German music also features on Colin’s solo release for 2008. This is the culmination of more than five years of study and live performance: a 2-CD set of the twelve Suites of 1714 by Johann Mattheson. It is a world premiere – a first complete recording of these pieces.

Mattheson is one of those German composers who have until recently been neglected, partly on the strength of having been more famous in their own day than J.S.Bach! A friend and rival of Handel in his youth, Mattheson later adopted a less adventurous career, as he struggled with the same deafness which was to torture Beethoven a century later. Most of Mattheson’s music was destroyed in bombing raids on his native city of Hamburg in World War II, but these suites reveal an amazing variety of mood and style, and an almost casual virtuosity, combined with an unusual level of wit.

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