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Audio production on location, as well as post-production and mastering for this album, was performed by the Artist, Frederick Hohman, using techniques similar to those he has employed since 1984 in the production of more than 350 album releases and audio albums featuring fine organists and choirs located throughout the USA, Scandinavia, Europe, the UK and Australia. Location audio for this album included a six microphone array with both newly-manufactured and vintage microphones by AKG, PML/Milab and Schoeps. The digital audio sampling rate throughout the production was at 96-kHz / 24-bit. Organist Frederick Hohman was groomed for a classical concert career in his native St. Louis, Missouri from age 11. He entered the Eastman School of Music in 1974, as an undergraduate student in the organ class of David Craighead. In 1977, he was awarded Eastman’s Performer’s Certificate in Organ, and he completed his Mus.B. with distinction. He remained at Eastman in David Craighead’s organ class for the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees, concluding his Eastman School studies in 1989. For 15 years after winning First Prize in the 1984 Eighth National Organ-Playing Competition, sponsored by the Ruth and Clarance Mader Foundation in Pasadena, California, as well as in the 1984 Arthur Poister Memorial Organ-Playing Competition, sponsored by the American Guild of Organists in Syracuse, New York, Frederick Hohman toured frequently with organ recitals throughout the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Australia and Scandinavia. His performances have been featured frequently on the Pipedreams (Michael Barone, host) radio series. He has appeared several times before audiences at local chapters, as well as at regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society and the American Institute of Organbuilders. Frederick Hohman’s career in music is multi-faceted. In addition to his career as a concert organist and as an occasional concerto soloist, Frederick is an award-winning composer of organ and choral music (2019 American Guild of Organists’ Pogorzelski-Yankee prize for new organ compositions), a radio producer (Pro Organo radio series, 1977-1979), a recording producer / engineer (Pro Organo, 1984-present), a television producer / director (Midnight Pipes television series, 1997-2001) an on-line educator (American Guild of Organist’s series “30 Lessons for the New Organist,” 2018), a musical instrument inventor (the Orgamuse, 2019), and a transcriber of symphonic works to the pipe organ (Zarex Scores / Wayne Leupold Editions). As of 2024, his YouTube video of the Toccata from Widor’s Fifth Organ Symphony has tallied 3.75 million views. In 2023, Frederick became inducted as a Voting Member of the Recording Academy (National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences). "For each of the volumes in this series, my aim has been to select a variety of Bach organ works, some better-known and some lesser-known, in various forms, in order to demonstrate the versatility of the composer as well as the versatility of the organs on which the works are played. In my Bach series, it has not been my aim to group, within one volume, all Bach organ works of a particular type (such as all Trio Sonatas) nor all Bach works from a particular period (such as all Leipzig Chorale Preludes). Had I chosen to provide you with a steady diet of, for instance, only Preludes and Fugues, or of only chorale-based works, I could fear that my programming could become tedious. Instead, I have assembled varied works from which anyone, from the musical scholar to the novice, can gain, from just one volume in the series, a representative impression of the style and forms used by Bach, while also grasping the overall genius of Johann Sebastian Bach. My interpretation aims to point out the expressive features, some salient, and some less obvious, in Bach’s writing and counterpoint. Bach’s organ music has endured centuries of performance and analysis. In my observations, Bach’s writing often conveys a progression of action, like a story. At the very least, the music carries on an intelligent musical conversation. Some might call this “musical rhetoric.” Bach’s rhetorical conversance can be highlighted in performance. I learned early on in my studies that the conversant nature of Bach’s organ music can be brought to the foreground by making minute, graduated adjustments in the spacing, placement and duration of notes. These adjustments, which I consider crucial to performance success in Bach, are not indicated in the scores that Bach left to us. These adjustments are very slight, in many cases amounting to changes of note placement and articulation that can be measured in mere milli-seconds. Such adjustments serve to draw out and reinforce the human nature of Bach’s music. I have noticed that my own Bach performance style involves more than simply acknowledging basic principles of baroque articulation, which so many musicians respect, but rather, I have found that any musician’s style in Bach results from a judicious application of minute temporal adjustments, combined with variations in articulation. This is especially needed in organ music where dynamics are so often fixed or limited. Clues as to how to articulate in Bach’s organ music are hinted at by the counterpoint and underlying harmonies. Eventually, interpretive experience in Bach leads a musician to favor a set of rules, or an interpretive “program” whenever Bach is performed. Each Bach player may come to favor his or her own unique set of conventions or rules. Another’s musician’s rules could be similar to mine, or my interpretive “program” may only slightly overlap with the interpretive rules embraced independently by other players. Each artist develops and applies his or her program of interpretation to taste, and here is the most important part: It is the consistency of the application of the artist’s “program” of articulation and timing that ultimately makes a performance of Bach’s music to be perceived by a listener as engaging and convincing. By the year 1979, at age 24, I had developed most of my own rules and preferences in performing Bach’s organ music. Exhibiting my own “Bach style,” over time, has yielded a by-product in the form of a thesis – where my self-analysis leads to a self-understanding of my own inclinations and tastes when performing Bach. My hope is to make a thorough discussion of Bach performing “formulas” in a published book. Until such a volume appears, the audio recordings in this Bach organ works series will provide an aural demonstration of how I enjoy interpreting the music of J. S. Bach." - Frederick Hohman