Organ Mass| Ullrich Böhme, organist at St Thomas

Newly built in celebration of the Bach-year in 2000, the Woehl-Organ at St Thomas’s Church Leipzig stands at the core of this double CD. In his enthralling recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Organ Mass, Ullrich Böhme (organist at St Thomas) demonstrates that the new instrument is suited to the interpretation of Bach’s great organ works as hardly any other. The basis for Bach’s first large-scale organ cycle to appear in print is formed by the chorales equivalent to the German missa brevis, and by further songs by Martin Luther. The disc’s unique feature: in between the chorale arrangements for organ, St Thomas’s Boys Choir sings the original chorales—of course in their settings by Johann Sebastian Bach. This offers the listener the opportunity for direct comparison between vocal model and instrumental arrangement: a convincing project performed by the true heirs of Johann Sebastian Bach at the authentic historical locale: St Thomas’s Boys Choir under Georg Christoph Biller (cantor at St Thomas), and Ullrich Böhme (organist at St Thomas) at Leipzig’s new Bach-organ.