Customer Reviews

Piet Kee at Weingarten

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My old and conservative grandfather heard this recording and was greatly moved by Piet's artistry!! I mention this account to illistrate the power of Piet Kee's poetic expression. For organ lovers this is a gem of a recording and should not be missed. Truely, there are only two geniuses of the organ today- Jean Guillou and Piet Kee; of the rest there is little to say...

Piet Kee at Weingarten. Piet Kee plays on the historical organ (dedicated 1750) by Gabler at the Benedictine Basilika in Weingarten, Germany. Recorded on 22nd and 23rd October, 1990. First published in 1991 as Chandos Chaconne 0520. Total playing time: 60'20".

This appears to be the sixth recital recorded by Piet Kee for Chandos. The first four were made at his "home" churches in the Netherlands (St. Laurens, Alkmaar, and St. Bavo, Haarlem), but then Kee ventured further afield to find organs really worth hearing. A trip to Spain yielded a Franck recital on the Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Basilika Santa Maria del Coro in San Sebastian; then Kee travelled on to Weingarten, a relatively small town nestling in the hills between Lake Constance and the Swabian "Alb" in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. There he managed to put together a mixed baroque programme which demonstrates to the full the possibilities of the incredible organ built in the Benedictine Basilika by Joseph Gabler. If you want a full description of this magnificent instrument, you will have to buy the disc and read the booklet, which has full-colour photographs as well as a description. The original building contract from the seventeen-thirties stipulates 6,666 pipes and 66 stops, and these are arranged around the six windows at the end of the Basilika with all the decorative pomp that one associates with the rococo period. Amazing! And the sound of the instrument is, even today, equally magnificent, both for "serious" organ music such as the ciaconas, the preludes and the fugues by Pachelbel and Bach played here, but also for the more "playful" baroque pieces which Kee has included to show off the features of the organ - its "cymbala" stop in "In dulci jubilo", its wine-cluster bells in Lebegue's "Les cloches" and the "cuculus" register in Murschhauser's Variations on "Lasst uns das Kindlein wiegen", where much is made of the echoing cuckoo effects.

As usual, Chandos have made a superb job of recording this organ; if your equipment can take it, there is an incredible range here, from jingling bells right down to those basses which most of us can't even hear (and which can make your loudspeakers shudder). The booklet contains a valuable essay on the organ and the music by Kee himself, plus a biography of the organist and complete stop lists (a full 8 pages of them!). The disc may not be easy to obtain as it appears to have been deleted from the Chandos catalogue, but organists and organ enthusiasts will know where they can possibly find a copy of a CD they should not miss.