Froberger Edition vol. 6:
Complete Ricercari – Chigi Toccatas:
Ricercari I-XIV – Toccate I-III

Bob van Asperen traverses nearly unknown territory with the sixth volume of the Froberger

Edition: How many people even know Froberger’s ricercars, the fourteen polyphonic works by no

less than the most important German keyboard composer of the seventeenth century? In order to

alleviate this knowledge gap, Bob van Asperen offers with the present release a comprehensive

survey of these works, played on an organ built in Pistoia, Tuscany, in 1664 by the Flemish organ

builder Willem Hermans.

Bob van Asperen’s agile playing and the colorful sounds of the organ in historical temperament

provide an optimal starting point for finally becoming more closely acquainted with this part of

Froberger’s oeuvre. The old genre of the ricercar reaches one of its high points in Froberger,

before finding its culmination in Bach’s Musical Offering. In addition to the ricercars, to be heard for

the first time is a group of three toccatas from the so-called Chigi Manuscript, which apparently

dates from the time of Froberger’s studies with Frescobaldi.

AEOLUS’s recording technology literally transports the listener into the Church of the Holy Spirit

(Spirito Santo) in Pistoia. This is naturally all the more so in the surround-sound version on the

SACD.

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the Hermans Organ of Spirito Santo, Pistoia (1664)