Petr Eben’s cycle Job is without question one of the outstanding organ masterpieces of the 20th century. While the recording of this and other music as part of a series on Hyperion by the Norwegian organist Halgeir Schiager has done a good deal to boost knowledge of Eben’s work outside the sphere of the organ cognoscenti, his music is still insufficiently known in the Anglophone world. This new recording of Job, then, is doubly welcome.

It seems to me impossible to say that this new recording by the Polish organist Andrzej Biako, made on the instrument
in the Karol Szymanowski Philharmonic Hall in Kraków, is better than Schiager’s, or the reverse. They are complementary and display different facets of instrument and organist, and, indeed, of the music itself. Schiager is, I think, slightly more lyrical – listen to the way he handles the haunting melody just shortly after the brutal introduction to ‘Acceptance of Suffering’. Biako is more of a dramatist, colouring and contrasting more emphatically, etching the chords that open ‘Longing for Death’, for example, in a much drier fashion, so that the melody that subsequently appears contrasts with them but seems also to be organically connected with them.

Organ aficionados will want both recordings, of course, but if you can only have one, then you may well be swayed by the fact that the Hyperion disc offers in addition the substantial Laudes and Homage à Buxtehude, leaving the Dux disc somewhat on the short side at only just under 45 minutes. Nevertheless, this is a significant contribution to the Eben discography.