Tucked away inside the booklet accompanying this disc is an acknowledgement to two vitally important people: “During the recordings the organ bellows were pumped by Peter Randlov and Torben Holdt”. This is apparently an organ still pumped by hand. Certainly it’s a very old one, constructed in 1555 by the Dutch builder Herman Raphaelis. In 1990 Marcussen restored the instrument as closely as possible to the state it was in following a 1654 rebuild by Mulisch. It’s very much an instrument in the Dutch/German tradition with some wonderfully ingratiating flutes topped by some decidedly harsh mixtures and mutations. It has the customary bird-song and bell effects (which are used here by Kristian Olesen with admirable discretion) and in lighter mood, not least the charming suite of dances by Johann Lorentz, makes a thoroughly captivating sound.
If I seem to be concentrating on the organ rather than the music or the performance it’s because this disc is clearly aimed at the instrument enthusiast. The programme, all of which Kristian Olesen, the cathedral’s organist, plays with exemplary stylistic sensitivity, is utterly appropriate both to the place and period of the instrument. Buxtehude is included, obviously, because he was Denmark’s leading baroque organist while most of the others were either taught or influenced by Sweelinck, a compatriot and contemporary of Raphaelis: the Sweelinckian influence is most vividly depicted in the echo effects of Jacob Praetorius’s Magnificat Primi Toni. That none of these pieces really represents the first division of baroque organ composition does not in the least detract from the chance to hear an intriguing instrument very much on its musical home-ground. Messrs Randlov and Holdt, despite some hint of physical exhaustion during Buxtehude’s Te Deum, did not labour in vain.'