The former Augustinian monastery in Rottenbuch in the Pfaffenwinkel region of Upper Bavaria is one of the oldest monasteries in the foothills of the Alps. In 1747, the organ in the collegiate church was rebuilt by the famous organ builder Balthasar Freywis. In 2020/21, the organ was restored to its original state. The esprit of a southern German late baroque organ can thus be experienced again.

On this album, organist Michael Hartmann shows the unique baroque organ in all its many facets and its extremely varied colors of sound. The program opens with a “Schlagstück” by the Rottenbuch organist Gelasius Hiebler, which was written on this very instrument in 1760. It is followed by rarely played works for organ from the same period by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is well known that Mozart liked to play famous and outstanding organs on his travels and so it was common practice at this time to transcribe piano works such as the Fantasia in D minor K. 397.

The following “Pieces for a flute clock” by Joseph Haydn were originally written for very small, mechanically operated organs. Here, individual, particularly delicate stops of the Freywis organ are brought to bear. Ludwig van Beethoven was also a trained organist and worked as such in Bonn from 1784. Several miniatures for organ written by him have survived from this period and are also performed here.

The program then moves on to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's 3rd Organ Sonata in F major, which features another special timbre with the Quintatoen in the second movement, and finally makes the transition to the organ grandmaster Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's most famous organ work, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565, is played at the end, bringing out the full glory of the restored Freywis organ.

This album was originally recorded in Dolby Atmos with three dimensional microphone techniques. No instrument is as directly linked to a specific acoustic space as the organ: each instrument is specifically designed and voiced for its intended location. Immersive recording and playback technologies now make it possible to transmit the natural sound in all spatial dimensions.