It’s rather easy to label Karg-Elert as the natural successor to his fellow late-19th/early-20th-century German composer Max Reger, as they both wrote within a post-Wagnerian/Straussian style. But whereas Reger confined his concert tours to Europe, Karg-Elert travelled further afield to Britain and North America and developed a much more cosmopolitan and progressive outlook. One can hear in his music the impressionism of Debussy, Delius and Grieg, together with the use of exotic and unusual organ timbres anticipating Messiaen and Tournemire. The result is a highly complex musical language which benefits from the opportunities for repeated listenings that CDs can afford.

Stefan Engels is fully equal to the task; he’s so in tune with Karg-Elert’s varied musical personality it’s as if he was born to play this composer. He faithfully observes all the detailed registration indications and adds some magical colours of his own. From the cinema organ-inspired Three New Impressions to the epic, magisterial Improvisation on ‘Nearer my God to Thee’, Engels delivers interpretations that may never be bettered.

The vast four-manual Skinner organ in the spacious acoustic of Toledo Cathedral is an appropriate choice, as it contains a plethora of orchestral colours, harp and celesta stops and an overwhelming tutti. Priory’s recording is first-rate, as is the detailed booklet with extensive information about the music and the Ohio organ. A magnificent disc.