There’s a really telling amalgam of music, musician and instrument on this latest release of Aeolus’s survey of Karg-Elert’s organ music. The organ in question is a transplant, originally built in 1927 by Oscar Walcker for the Hans Sachs-Haus in Gelsenkirchen and restored and rehomed by the Romanus Seifert company in Papenburg in 2018-20. The new pipe-less façade, designed by an architectural firm in Cologne has, understandably, attracted much derision: a series of grey boxes with wave motifs constructed of medium density fibre made of rice husks.

If ever there was an argument for keeping architects away from organ design… The organ sounds, however, magnificent in its new home and perfectly attuned to the glorious decadence of Karg-Elert’s music. The Gregorian Chant-infused Cathedral Windows is heard alongside the Triptych, concluding with an extraordinarily German take on the ‘Marche Pontificale’ referencing Liszt’s oratorio The Legend of St Elizabeth. Finally, the Diverse Pieces, Op 75, includes the Funerale performed at the London Karg- Elert Festival of 1930 and shot through with quotes from Guilmant’s First Sonata, as well as the splendidly kitsch Chorale Improvisation on In Dulci Jubilo. Elke Völker manages this mercurial music brilliantly, manipulating every gesture, phrase and dynamic contour as if the 90+ stop Walcker were a puppet on a string. Outstanding.