Axel Ruoff: Complete Works for Organ, Vol. 2

Featuring

Jan Lehtola
Axel Ruoff

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Compositional Technique

The 'Sieben biblische Szenen' are designed to be of easy to lower-medium difficulty, making them accessible to skilled part-time or amateur players and playable on smaller organs.

Performer Biography

Jan Lehtola, the organist on this recording, is an international virtuoso who has given over 160 world and regional premieres and collaborated with many composers.

Compositional Technique

Ruoff's First Toccata, 'Wie eine Maske dahinter die Nacht gähnt', uses compound meters and a restless tempo to generate energy from rhythm, and is constructed in an almost serial manner.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Axel Ruoff's organ music is spiritual and often inspired by biblical narratives, lyrical texts, or images, but never in a purely descriptive or doctrinal way.

Composer's Artistic Vision

For his 'Sieben biblische Szenen', Axel Ruoff aimed to express the emotional or spiritual response to artworks, rather than describing the pictures in detail.

Composer Biography

Axel Ruoff, born in Stuttgart in 1957, studied composition, music theory, and piano, and later became a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart.

Recording & Production

This album was recorded on March 5, 2020, in St Michael's Church, Turku, Finland, with Antti Pohjola handling recording and editing, and Jan Lehtola as producer.