The polished concert of Gustav Leonhardt from 1962 is unique in his discography ★★★★☆

You can do this one hundred percent unique organ album of the baroque celebrity Gustav Leonhardt, who died in 2012. But 99 percent yes. Because who knows the LP recording from Zwolle 1962, recorded by a label that has only distributed a few hundred of them in the United States?

Leonhardt’s former student Skip Sempé bought a copy and had it digitally polished. So that we can now sit down in Zwolle in the Grote of Sint-Michaelskerk. Leonhardt, then an aspiring master in his mid-thirties, played on the famous Schnitger organ works by English composers from the decades around 1600, such as William Byrd and John Bull. For the most part they are unique in his discography.

Half a century later, the freshness is especially noticeable. Leonhardt, never a musician of grandly displayed feelings, plays the fantasias and other keyboard work almost serenely. But there is always a trill or string of nuts that betrays the excitement under the skin.