A few words of clarification before tackling the performances, as most of the booklet is taken up with an imaginary conversation between Hansjörg Albrecht and Wagner discussing in jocularly formal dialogue the aesthetics and practicalities of transferring Wagner’s magnificent concepts from the orchestra to the organ. The transcriptions are by ‘Edwin Henry Lemare und Edwin Horn’ – no further details, though most seem to be by Lemare or at least based on them. The instrument is the double organ of St Nikolai in Kiel: a choir organ by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll and Charles Mutin, originally installed in Tourcoing, northern France, and moved to Kiel in 2003-04; and the great organ by Detlef Kleuker from 1965 (renovated in 2008). Both can be co-ordinated and played from one console.

The five transcriptions are cleverly ordered as a symphonic suite: introduction (Tannhäuser), adagio (Parsifal), scherzo (The Flying Dutchman), intermezzo (Tristan), finale (Die Meistersinger). The recording is sonically awesome. Even at a quarter volume on my system, the end of Die Meistersinger had my wife pleading with me to ‘turn it down!’ St Nikolai has a spacious acoustic (though without quite the reverb that makes an organ like the one at St Paul’s, London, so difficult to record) and the microphones have, of necessity, to be placed some way from the console. But while the clarity of these ingenious and detailed transcriptions is often at a premium, one has to admire Albrecht’s formidable technique and piquant registrations and, in the end, simply surrender to the sheer aural magnificence of the music.