For his second recording for ASV on this 1984 Peter Collins instrument, Graham Barber has turned from Bach ((CD) CD GAU120/21, 7/91) to one of Bach's favourite pupils. Johann Ludwig Krebs's organ music has surprisingly meagre representation in the record catalogues, which is a great pity since he wrote some very fine pieces. Not that you would necessarily get that im- pression from this record. Graham Barber has hardly gone out of his way to find music which will win converts. The Fantasia a giusto Italiano has little more than curiosity value and you would have to go a long way to find a more tedious chorale prelude than Wir glauben all an einen Gott.
Barber brings the lighter, brisker and especially the contrapuntal items very much alive. The Trios and Fugues bustle with energy, while the Fantasia on Wer nur den lieben Gott lasst walten positively bubbles along. Elsewhere, though, his playing fails to impress. In such a bone-dry acoustic as this and on an instrument which so cruelly exposes everything the player does, it takes hard work to sustain a musical line moving at anything less than allegro. Here, instead, of the flowing, singing melodies Krebs would have intended, we get little pin-pricks of notes which can't coalesce into coherent musical phrases. With unrelenting staccato Barber seems to be imposing a false sense of jollity on Herzlich lieb hab ich dich, o Herr which is quite alien to it.
The reservations I had about this organ with the previous disc hold good here. Singly and in small combinations its stops are immensely attractive. There are mouth-watering flutes sprinkled around Zeuch ein zu deinen Toren. Fuller organ tone, however, is far less pleasant. The flamboyant Preludes in C and D become bogged down by this cloying organ tone and, coupled with Barber's angular playing, Herr Gott dich loben alle wir seems cumbersome. The big problem on this disc is that we get rather too generous a helping of this aspect of the organ and not enough of the other.
Not an unreserved recommendation, I know, but don't let me discourage anyone from exploring the music of a composer whose output is worthy of the widest possible attention.'