Franz Tunder and Nicolaus Bruhns

The seventeenth-century North German organ school produced some of the most imaginative and technically demanding keyboard music of the Baroque era. Long before the birth of JS Bach, organists in the great Hanseatic cities cultivated a style that combined virtuosic freedom, expressive chorale settings, and brilliant contrapuntal writing.

This recital is devoted to two of the school's greatest figures: Franz Tunder (1614–1667), organist of the Marienkirche in Lübeck, and his remarkable successor Nicolaus Bruhns (1665–1697). Though Bruhns died at the age of only thirty-one, his surviving organ works stand among the most spectacular achievements of the seventeenth century, uniting daring improvisatory writing with profound structural control.

The programme alternates Tunder's expressive chorale settings with Bruhns' celebrated praeludia, allowing listeners to hear both the devotional and the virtuosic sides of the North German tradition. Together on a Baroque organ built by Dutch builder SF Blank, these works reveal a musical world that profoundly influenced the young Bach and helped shape the future of German organ music.

Programme:
Bruhns Praeludium in E minor ('The Little')
Tunder Christ lag in Todesbanden
Bruhns Praeludium in G major
Tunder Jesus Christus, unser Heiland
Bruhns Praeludium in G minor
Tunder Auf meinen lieben Gott
Bruhns Praeludium in E minor ('The Great')