Bernard Foccroulle

Bernard Foccroulle – Weckmann: Complete Organ Works (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:14:19 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Ricercar

After Buxtehude, Tunder, Reinken, Bruhns, Scheidemann and Böhm, Bernard Foccroulle pursues his exploration of the repertoire of the organists of northern Germany before Bach, with the works of Matthias Weckman. Trained in the entourage of Schütz and having perfect mastery of the profession of Sweelinck’s heirs and all aspects of the Italian style, this composer compels recognition as the keystone in the generation preceding Buxtehude’s. The repertoire tackles the free forms of the new stylus fantasticus but also proposes different forms of pieces inspired by chorale tunes, including two monumental fantasias in several sections. Bernard Foccroulle made this recording on three historic organs: in Hollern, Stade, and primarily on the recently restored organ of the Katharinen Kirche in Hamburg. This constitutes an event that will enchant enthusiasts! Let us recall that, with this double album, Ricercar can offer its faithful public the complete works of Matthias Weckman, the cantatas having been recorded by the Ricercar Consort (RIC216), and the instrumental music by La Fenice and the harpsichordist Siebe Henstra (RIC282).
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Bernard Foccroulle – Praetorius & Schildt: Selected Organ Works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:27 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

Bernard Foccroulle devotes his latest recording — the last of the anthology of Northern German organ music of the Baroque period — to Jacob Praetorius and Melchior Schildt, both pupils of Sweelinck. Praetorius and Schildt’s music is not only strongly marked by Lutheran tradition, in which the chorale played a fundamental part, but also by other influences, principally Italian, that prepared the way for the explosion of the stylus fantasticus at the end of the 17th century.

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Bernard Foccroulle – Böhm: Orgelwerke (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:02 minutes | 657 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Ricercar

Bernard Foccroulle here continues his exploration of the north German organist composers with a recording of the works of Georg Böhm, a composer with whom J.S. Bach had come into contact at the end of his adolescence. At the foot of a manuscript dated around 1700 in which he had copied out pieces by Buxtehude, Reinken and Pachelbel that served as models for his own compositions, the young Johannes Sebastian Bach wrote that he was a pupil of Georg Böhm in Lüneburg. The organ works of this north German master foreshadow the young J.S. Bach’s first compositions in many respects; it was also clearly thanks to Böhm that Bach came into contact with the various genres of French music of the period. The Schnitger organ of the Grote Kerk in Alkmaar lends itself particularly well to this repertoire thanks to the power and the quality of its solo registers.
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Bernard Foccroulle – Boesmans, Bartholomée, Foccroulle & Mernier: For Early Instruments (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 54:49 minutes | 524 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Ricercar

In the 1960s, the blossoming interest in the rediscovery of early music was due in part to instrumentalists who also played a very active role in creating the newest contemporary works. It was in this context that Pierre Bartholomée wrote a Tombeau de Marin Marais for the musicians of the Alarius ensemble (Janine Rubinlicht, Robert Kohnen, Wieland and Sigiswald Kuijken) who played in the Musiques Nouvelles ensemble at the same time. The musicians of that generation are in a sense the ‘ancestors’ of those who became the first artists on the Ricercar label. This recording, released as part of Ricercar’s fortieth anniversary celebrations, thus pays tribute to Bartholomée’s pioneering initiative by reissuing a remastered version of his composition alongside recent works written for the period instruments of some of the label’s key ensembles in 2020.
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Bernard Foccroulle – De Arauxo: Libro de tientos (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 04:39:21 minutes | 5,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

The music of Francisco Correa de Arauxo, still regrettably neglected, constitutes a peak of organ literature in Spain and an exceptional bridge between the Renaissance and the Baroque. His Facultad orgánica (1626) is both a treatise on the performance of organ music and a collection of sixty-nine pieces of outstanding quality. This collection will give the most complete picture possible of his output, played by Bernard Foccroulle on historic organs in Andalusia and Castile. Singers and musicians from the InAlto ensemble will perform pieces by Correa alongside some of the major composers he mentions in his preface, including Josquin, Cabezón, Gombert and La Rue.
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