The catalogue of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works numbers 1128 works, although he actually composed many more than that: a quantity of works have unfortunately not survived to the present day. Some works have also survived in an unfinished form, either because Bach himself did not finish them or because part of the manuscript has been lost. This recording presents all of Bach’s organ works that have survived as fragments; I myself have provided them with completions. Not an easy task, to say the least, but I have tried to adhere to Bach’s style, knowing only too well the impossibility of imitating such a supreme artist. This notwithstanding, it is at least now possible for us to hear and appreciate works that had to a great extent been forgotten.

The Monteverdi contemporary Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) is now unfortunately almost exclusively seen as an important and influential composer of works for keyboard instruments, but he also composed both sacred and secular vocal music throughout his entire creative period.

This album from Passacaille with the exceptional baroque violinist Mayumi Hirasaki presents masterpieces of the virtuoso violin literature with 'scordatura', which had its heyday between about 1600 and 1730. In addition to well-known names such as Biber and Tartini, the varied and cleverly arranged programme also features charming rarities by Johann Joseph Vilsmayr and Pietro Castrucci.

In the German village of Rysum, in East Frisia, a precious instrument is preserved: an ancient organ, built in 1442/1513, which still has most of the original pipes. Lorenzo Ghielmi and the vocal ensemble Biscantores presents a sort of "organ Mass", where organ pieces and liturgical chant alternate according to the practice of the time. A journey between the late Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance – this is how you could describe the musical programme of this CD, set up in collaboration with the musicologist Konrad Küster, which perfectly illustrates the unique sounds of this instrument.