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Gustav Leonhardt (1928-2012) had a long and extraordinarily productive career, and his discography includes not just the legendary harpsichord recordings but his extensive output on the organ as well. This album adds to the digital availability of one of his earliest organ recordings, from 1962, when he worked with the US-based audiophile label Cambridge to record harpsichord and organ works by Sweelinck, Froberger and the English virginalists.
The album appears never to have been transferred to digital media until now. Even so, the mastertapes are apparently missing, and what listeners have here is a recording made from a high-quality LP transfer. A booklet essay by Skip Sempé explains the strange odyssey of the recording which, he says, includes only three works that Leonhardt recorded elsewhere. So this is a substantial and welcome addition to the Leonhardt canon.
The sound quality is excellent, given the source from which it was taken, and the performances are as compelling as anything Leonhardt recorded. Two works by Byrd round out the programme, which includes pieces by Gibbons, Tompkins, Bull, Farnaby and John Munday. The Byrd can stand for the rest, measured, temperate but with an inner rhythmic cohesion, everything orderly but quietly urgent. Leonhardt’s registration in other pieces sometimes suppresses the more bustling lines, a decision that helps give these works more lyrical clarity. Peter Philips’s extensive Fantasia from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is particularly impressive as well, clear, perceptive and well plotted throughout.
It’s been a decade since Leonhardt died and his legacy only grows more impressive. It’s a happy accident of history that with this album we not only get more Leonhardt, but Leonhardt at his finest.
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