Mauricio Kagel

The organ music of Mauricio Kagel, played by Dominik Susteck, from the scandal of Improvisation ajoutée (1962) to Rrrrrrr... (1980/81). Between them come Phantasie für Orgel mit Obbligati (1967), with its two tapes, and General Bass (1972). Susteck adds K-A-G-E-L, five improvisations of his own built on the letters of the composer's name.

Kagel was born in Buenos Aires on 24 December 1931, moved to Germany in 1957 and died in Cologne on 18 September 2008. Susteck, born in Bochum in 1977, has been composer and organist at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne since 2007, where this recording was made on 7-9 April 2014. It is a production of Deutschlandfunk for its Forum neue Musik 2014, with Boris Heinrich and Tobias Hagedorn as assistants in Improvisation ajoutée. The producers are Frank Kämpfer and Rolf W. Stoll, and the liner notes are by Ingo Dorfmüller.

In Improvisation ajoutée the organist and two assistants must speak, cough, laugh, whistle and clap, and above all groan and shout, besides playing. The assistants also handle the registration from a part of their own, so stops and colours change very fast, in a rhythm independent of the organist's score. Phantasie has a simpler sound world. Its two tapes depict the organist's working day, a kind of audio film that blurs the line between art and life. Rrrrrrr... is Kagel's last organ work, eight short pieces from a larger cycle whose titles all begin with R, from Raga and Ragtime-Waltz to Rossignols enrhumés. General Bass was written for any instrument able to sustain continuous sounds, and here it becomes soft rumbling with shifting overtones.

The planned premiere of Improvisation ajoutée in Bremen Cathedral was called off at the last minute over the reservations of the church authorities. In MusicWeb International, Dominy Clements called the disc "very well recorded and a rich source of superb performances and remarkable music". The titles of Susteck's improvisations, Krachen, Aura, Geräusche, Ecken and Lang, follow the letters K-A-G-E-L.

CD, Wergo WER 73452, released in 2016, with a 26-page booklet in German and English.