Douglas Bruce was born in Perth, Scotland, and educated in Edinburgh. While still a teenager, he was invited to become organist and choirmaster at Augustine Congregational Church, Edinburgh, by its then minister, the noted hymnologist Erik Routley. In 1965 he moved to London, becoming assistant organist at St. Columba’s Church of Scotland, Pont Street. While pursuing a career in accountancy he took up organ studies with Noel Rawsthorne at Liverpool Cathedral, and obtained the ARCO, ARCM (with honours) and LRAM diplomas in organ performance.

Since 1974 he has lived in Switzerland, where he became Deputy Chief Accountant at the Bank for International Settlements, Basel. He has continued his organ studies under Felix Pachlatko (organist of Basel Cathedral), and this year participated in master classes under Kevion Bowyer, Ludger Lohmann and Gillian Weir.

Following early retirement in 2001 from the world of banking, Douglas Bruce has devoted his time fully to organ-playing, becoming a much-traveled recitalist. In this capacity he has visited eighteen states of the USA, playing in the cathedrals of Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Memphis, Orlando, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco, as well as in larger and smaller churches in many parts of the country. Next month he will play a Sunday afternoon recital at Washington National Cathedral.

His travels in Canada and Europe have taken him to cathedrals in Berne (broadcast recital), Bourges, Chester, Dunblane, Edinburgh (both cathedrals), Freiberg (Saxony), Geneva, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Prague, Toronto, Truro and Ulm. In addition he has played at the universities of Harvard and Edinburgh, and the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow.

Douglas Bruce is currently principal organist at St Franz Xaver Church in Münchenstein (near Basel) and assistant organist at the City of Basel Cemetery.

Although blind from the age of two, John Stanley displayed prodigious musical talent as a child, and under the guidance of Maurice Greene he studied “with great diligence, and a success that was astonishing” (Burney). At the age of seventeen became the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree at Oxford University. In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Society of the Inner Temple – a position he held until his death. It was at the ancient Temple Church that his brilliant playing upon the organ and harpsichord attracted the attention of many fine musicians, including Handel, who regularly visited the church to hear him. Although many of his works have been lost to posterity, his Thirty Voluntaries remain as testimony to his great skill in composition.

Maurice Greene served as a choirboy at St-Paul’s Cathedral in London, where he became organist in 1718. In addition to various honorary appointments, he became professor of music at Cambridge University, and in 1735 Master of the King's Musick, the highest position for a musician in England. His magnificent Twelve Voluntaries follow the usual scheme of two parts, and are among the most finished of their kind. Their style closely resembles that of his friend Handel, being similar to what Handel might have written as Preludes and Fugues for the organ.

Gaetano Valeri is not well known outside his native Italy. He served for almost 35 years as cathedral organist in Padua. The piano works and reputation of Valeri reveal that he was an exceptional pianist. His organ music employed the use of the complete melodic range, and several works were published and reprinted during his lifetime. The present sonata was marked for 4-foot flute stop (sounding one octave above the human voice).

Eighteen delightful miniatures were written between 1717 and 1723 for a large standing clock belonging to Leopold, Duke of Anhalt-Cöthen. This device had harp-like strings inside, activated by a hammer mechanism. The clock stood almost nine feet high by three feet wide, and contained small barrels (“Walzen”), which played these pieces. The music is Bach–like and very charming, although Wolfgang Schmieder originally questioned its authenticity in the great Bach catalogue. The clock pieces of Handel were often re–workings of existing keyboard essays by the composer (while those of Mozart far transcended the limitations of the pinned-cylinder mechanism!). By contrast, Haydn’s contributions to the medium &endash; replete with twittering bird effects – exude a sparkling geniality. The clock for which they were written comprised a tiny mechanical organ with a single rank of flute-toned pipes. Father Primitivus Niemecz, who was librarian to Haydn’s patron, Prince Esterhazy, as well as playing cello in the court orchestra, constructed it.

The Prelude in c minor was written - like Bach’s contemporaneous Prelude in b minor - in the style of a concerto grosso and dates from around 1730. It begins with large chords in the left and right hands, progresses through several expressive episodes, and closes with the original statement. The work comprises 144 measures, of which the opening and closing statement account for 24 each, and occupy a further total of 24 measures interspersed within the second theme. The latter takes the form of a scale moving upward and back down, and was used by Bach in his cantata Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled. Recent research suggests that the Fugue was written by not by Bach, but by his last student, Johann Christian Kittel. Its subject alternates with playful episodes that wander off in various directions, before the work winds up with a noble closing section that would certainly be worthy of the Thomaskantor himself.

A former child-prodigy and a nephew of the Methodist preacher John Wesley, Samuel Wesley stood head and shoulders above all other English organists of his generation, and was particularly noted for the brilliance of his improvisations, of which there are many ecstatic eye-witness accounts. In the closing days of his life – at his last public appearance – he and Mendelssohn (then in his late twenties and, like Wesley, an energetic propagator of the music of Bach) heard each other play. The series of pieces containing the very tuneful Air and Gavotte was written during a temporary recovery from the bouts of depression that Wesley had suffered following a severe accident early in his career. The set appeared under the title: “Twelve Short Pieces for the Organ with a Full Voluntary added, Composed and Inscribed to Organists in General”.

Hans Uwe Hielscher is organist of the Marktkirche, Wiesbaden, and has performed more than 2500 organ recitals worldwide, including over 30 concert tours in 39 states of the USA. In 1985 the French government conferred on him the honour of “Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” in recognition of his worldwide promotion of French organ music, including his authorship of “Alexandre Guilmant – his Life and Works”.

The words of the hymn “Immortal, Invisible” were written by Walter Chalmers Smith, a former minister of the Reid Memorial Church, Edinburgh (where today’s recitalist was appointed organist and choirmaster while still in his teens). Hans Uwe’s Variations on the theme reflect – perhaps not unexpectedly – his life-long involvement with the organ music of France. Written in 1986, they are dedicated to Geoffrey Hannant (a former organist at St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, UK) and his wife.

Josef Rheinberger is now a virtually forgotten composer except, perhaps, in the one area in which he excelled – organ music. Born in Liechtenstein, he lived and worked in Germany in the second half of the 19^th century, and his massive volume of twenty organ sonatas stands as one of that century’s greatest contributions to the instrument's repertoire. Notwithstanding their consummate musical workmanship, there is a certain lack of stylistic variety within each work, which is less in evidence when individual movements are heard separately.

Dudley Buck was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and after study in Leipzig, Dresden and Paris, took up positions as organist in Hartford, Chicago and Boston. He is regarded, along with John Knowles Paine, as one of the first two thoroughly trained organists the USA ever produced. His compositions include several organ works, including the Grand Sonata in E-flat, Op. 22, from which the present Scherzo is taken.

Paul Müller-Zürich was born in Zürich, and studied at the city’s Conservatory, where at the age of 19 he was appointed as a lecturer in music theory, remaining there until 1968. As teacher, conductor, composer and organiser he was one of the most significant Swiss musicians in the twentieth century. He was awarded the Music Prize of the city of Zurich in 1953, and in 1958 won the composition prize of the Swiss Musicians’ Association, whose president he became in 1960.

Douglas Bruce, August 2006

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