Variety or unity?

By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)​​​​​​

Before our "Maria Zart" recital last week Ausra and I went to our church and recorded a couple of pieces by Franz Tunder (1614-1667), an important composer from North German Baroque School. He was a predecessor of Dieterich Buxtehude in St. Mary's church in Lubeck.

I hope you will enjoy Ausra's playing in these videos:

Praeludium in g (Dorian) and Canzona by Tunder

A few of our students liked the pieces on this program so much that they asked to prepare the fingering and pedaling for them so that they could learn these gems as well.

Therefore I've just finished preparing Tunder's pieces, Wir glauben all an einen Gott, BWV 680 by Bach and the famous Sortie in Eb major by Lefebure-Wely for our Maria Zart collection of practice scores with complete fingering and pedaling (50 % discount is valid until next Wednesday).

Last Tuesday after this recital we went to our Unda Maris studio practice and met our student Regina, the senior IT specialist here at Vilnius University without whom administering salaries for faculty and staff would be a lot more difficult task.

Regina also happens to love playing the organ. Right now she is working on BWV 554 and is struggling to find time for organ playing because she works until evenings and when she comes home, it's too late to play for the neighbors who want to sleep. So what she does is she practices in her mind while commuting to work on the bus. It takes concentration and focus but it works.

So on Tuesday she said that the concept of playing a piece or two from every century of organ repertoire up to the present day in one recital was more interesting for her than a concert of say, just music of one historical period or one composer.

What do you think? Do you think that listeners enjoy variety more than unity?