This seventh instalment of Masaaki Suzuki’s critically acclaimed series of the complete organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach includes seven pieces from a manuscript known as the Leipzig Chorales. Conceived around 1739, this collection contains no new compositions, but rather ‘reworkings’ of organ chorales dating from the years 1708–17, when Bach was in Weimar.

The chorale arrangements are based on established Lutheran melodies that particularly appealed to Bach. Bach took great care with this project, selecting the best of his organ music from earlier in his career, and saw it as his legacy for the future. This recording also includes the six Schübler Chorales (named after the collection’s publisher), which take chorales he had already included in his religious cantatas and adapt them for the organ. Together with the Orgel-Büchlein and the third book of the Clavier-Übung, the Leipzig Chorales and the Schübler Chorales represent the pinnacle of Bach’s sacred organ music.

On this recording, Masaaki Suzuki plays the Arp Schnitger organ of the Martinikerk in Groningen, the Netherlands, one of the largest and most famous baroque organs in Northern Europe. Arp Schnitger was the leading organ builder in northern Germany in the seventeenth century, and his admirers included Buxtehude, Handel and Bach himself.