Bartosz Jakubczak, organ - Renaissance and Baroque Reminiscences

This album presents a musical dialogue between early keyboard music and contemporary works. I invited composers associated with the Chopin University of Music to write pieces inspired by 16th- and 17th-century works. The composers are: Magdalena Bialecka, Tomasz Soczek, Piotr Tabakiernik, and Aldona Nawrocka. Each of them composed one piece.

For the recording, I chose Vienna's oldest organ; the 1642 Wockherl organ in the Church of St Jerome (Franziskanerkirche). The instrument is tuned in meantone temperament and is provided with a short octave and - most interestingly - split sharps for enharmonic tones, the so-called Subsemitonien, which incidentally turned out to be an additional source of creative ideas. Thanks to the Renaissance and Baroque reminiscences manifested in the commissioned contemporary compositions, this recording is a unique artistic experiment that allowed us to show the sound variety of the 1642 Wockherl organ.

- Bartosz Jakubczak (excerpt from booklet notes)