This disc is part of a series covering the complete organ music of Dietrich Buxtehude, the Danish-German composer whom the young
Bach walked a few hundred miles to hear. The rising level of interest in Buxtehude is apparent from the fact that there are two such series underway, this one from Denmark's Dacapo label and another on Naxos. In the absence of a single-disc compilation, this is a reasonable disc to pick if you want just one. Its most distinctive feature is the organ used: it is a small instrument in a church in the city of Helsingbørg, Buxtehude's hometown, which is now part of Sweden. The organ does not have the booming, towering quality often heard in North German organ music on disc, but it brings out the individual lines of the music with startling clarity. Danish organist
Bine Bryndorf adjusts her style to match the instrument, taking tempos quickly without fear that the sound will become muddied. Her performances are brisk with plenty of forward drive. The music on the disc consists of short pieces: preludes, toccatas, canzonas and canzonettas (the two words in this context denote ancestors of the fugue), and short chorale settings. Several are examples of Buxtehude's favored multi-sectional procedure that in his own time gave rise to the idea of a "stylus phantasticus" -- a term plastered on the cover of each of the first three discs in Dacapo's series for no very good reason. Later discs in the set will apparently take up longer pieces. The liner notes are confusing to all but specialists, but the disc is worthwhile for its unusual organ sound even for those who already own some of Buxtehude's organ music.