Customer Reviews

Bach - Greatest Organ Works, Vol. 1

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This disc and its companion (Vol II) are a joy to be enjoyed over and over. As someone who plays the organ(I'm no organist!)
I throughly enjoyed Herr Stamm's playing of Bach. Like the "middle bear" in The Three Bears, his playing is "just
right"... neither too slow nor too fast. His registrations are varied and suitable to those of Bach's time and the choice of works includes enough variation to keep the volumes interesting.

I had the great joy of visiting a "sister" organ to this instrument... the Trost Organ in Altenburg back in 1981. I still recall its wonderful singing quality, lacking the harsher mixtures of the North German Baroque organs of the 16th century. This organ, like the Altenburg, has the silvery qualities of the Silbermann's and were known to be of Bach's liking.

So why only four stars rather than five? Well I would gladly give it four and a half but five... no. I would wish for more
camera on the pedal passages and less of the Church overhead

and organ facade... lovely as they are. In particular those
passages where the pedals are solo or carrying the line should
have been given over to the camera. In another review a listener has wisely suggested three cameras allowing the viewer to choose what he would like to see at any given moment. That would rate a star all by itself!

I hope this wonderful series will continue on DVD. If you have any interest in the glory of J.S. Bach on a real organ then these discs are a must.

Great program, great sound, and great photography. It is often hard to get good video of an organ; they do a terrific job here of showing the keyboard, fingering etc. But the best for me is the music analysis on subtitle 2. Since I saw my first DVD 3 years ago, I have been looking for someone to start offering such analysis. It helps those of us who are not expert in music to understand better what's going on. The organ registration on subtitle 3 is interesting, but not useful to me. I hope that we will see a lot more classical music DVD's with this analysis. It can't cost that much, and if one doesn't want to see it, you don't have to turn it on.

The sound on this DVD is better than I expected. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack produces a truly enveloping experience. The balance among the channels is so precise that you feel like you are in the church. For those who have hi-fi equipment, you will also be pleased with the 48k/24 bit non-compressed stereo, which delivers the sound in absolute purity. This is the best sounding organ recording I have heard. The only disapointment I have with this performance is the conservative use of registration changes. Being an organist, I would expect the Passacaglia to include more tonal changes. However, on this period instrument, I can see the difficulty in making very quick registration changes. One more thing, it is odd that they show the face of the performer upclose from a camera on the console. Hans expression is almost comical.

Great sound, both in multichannel mode and PCM stereo. This is my first DVD that really turns me on. 48k/24b uncompressed stereo track gives the idea of perfect sound reproduction in home entertaining system. Even if You are not a classical music fan, You'll be surprised with a lot of positive and emotional experiences when listening to this Concert.

A little disappointment comes from the fact, that this DVD do not allow playing it in "recorded 96k/24b format". My DVD player allows playing in this "rich" format without downsampling. 4 (****) stars just for this fact, but 5 (*****) stars for overall performance. Great music DVD !

This DVD on Bachs organ works is awesome ! There is no other words to describe it. The sound was suberb! If there had to be a little critical it would be - would have loved to seen more foot work. Would of loved to have seen an inside picture of all his foot work. I was thrilled with both DVDs - Vol 1 & 2 and hope they have more planed. This is an wonderful example of the art involved in making an organ.My hats are off to the camerman and sound people - but of course the performer was "AWESOME" Thank you for having this available to us. Hope to see more. LeRoy Weber

A beautiful survey of the organ works of J.S. Bach. Performed true to period on the recently restored Trost Organ in Waltershausen, Germany, Hans-André Stamm does a masterful job of recreating what Pappa Bach himself may have sounded like playing this gigantic instrument. The 5.1 DD SS was absolutely magnificent on my Onkyo HTS!! A true richness at both the high and low ends got my living room vibrating with the scale of this impressive performance on an immense instrument. Leave the subwoofer on for this DVD!! Sitting in the sweet spot, it is hard to get any closer to live without putting the pipes right in the house (I have a good friend that did just that). The video is in the full screen format and shows mostly the complex finger work of Herr Stamm while alternating with images of the organ. While some criticism of Stamm's performance style has been noted, he is a serious and accomplished musician with a deep soul that he pours into operating this fine organ. I found the video as enjoyable as the music. For music lovers, and especially if you like the pipes, this is better than any CD I have owned. It is almost as exciting as a live performance.

Mr. Stamm's playing is very good, and is consistent with current thinking on historical performance practices. Also, the audio and video quality of this DVD is top-notch. By the way, the video is anamorphic widescreen, not full-screen. I think the opening titles might be in full-screen format, but once the music starts you have a widescreen presentation. Excellent!

The use of multiple cameras keeps things visually interesting. My only suggestion for future volumes is to include more frequent video of intricate pedal passages and less video of the organ's facade. (Hands and feet are where the visual interest in organ performance is found, and both should be featured prominently.) The camera looking down on the keydesk from above provides an excellent view and could be used much more frequently.

The extra features are also outstanding. Musical analysis and registrations are invaluable. This is a classical music DVD done right.

Hopefully we'll see more organ DVDs in the future, including different organs and different composers.

The video from this DVD is outstanding. I wouldn't change anything. The only issue is with fairly continuous low frequency noise. If you have large speakers or a subwoofer, you will hear the noise - very disappointing.

I highly recommend this DVD (also volume 2) for anyone who loves classical music. To be precise, it is baroque organ music.

Pros:

1. A variety of Bach composition: dance music, church music, fugue...

2. Hans-André Stamm's fingerworks is really clean, even,... And his footworks are fantastic. He seems so natural when performing all the difficult pieces.

3. The organ is picture perfect, ornaments, decorations everywhere... on the pipes, the 3 key registers, the sides, angels above,...

4. The organ sound is clear, diverse,... I listen to stereo (not multi 5.1 channel), with no sub-woofer. This is a good test DVD for the hifi. Really enjoy the entire audio spectrum from deep bass to high frequencies from the tweeters.

5. The extra video shows a glimpse of Waltershausen, Germany. It is so peaceful.

Cons:

1. The performance is a bit short.

I highly recommend this. Even though it is a bit short, but I fully enjoy every minute of it. This is definitely a must-see.

This DVD has an amazing performance that is captured visually from many interesting angles. The works performed are wonderful and the sound is remarkable, even on my two channel system. The (optional) technical material provided is very interesting. I use this DVD to show friends who haven't yet purchased a DVD player the potential of this medium. Highly recommended!