Mozart’s Fantasy in F minor for mechanical organ from 1791 was ranked “among the immortal composer’s supreme masterpieces” by his friend, the composer Ignaz von Seyfried. It begins with an exceptionally virtuosic, “terrifying Allegro”, which, in Seyfried’s words, “arouses a thousand various emotions. The violent modulation to F sharp minor startles the listener, who imagines the ground shaking beneath him. Music of the spheres is the lovely, so tenderly expressed Adagio [recte Andante] in A flat major. It elicits tears – salutary tears of longing for heaven [...] The ending points to the hereafter.”

In addition to Mozart’s seldom-performed work, the Swedish organist Hans Fagius, who appears throughout Europe, USA, Canada and Australia, has programmed pieces by Handel and Kent Kennan (partnered by Berliner Philharmoniker principal trumpet Tamás Velenczei) as well as Hindemith’s Sonata No. 1, whose range of expression spans the gamut from playful virtuosity to extreme intimacy. Filling out the programme is, among other works, the meditative Trio Sonata in C minor BWV 526, one of six “Sonatas or Trios for Two Keyboards with Obbligato Pedal” that Bach composed for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann.

To conclude his Berlin recital, Hans Fagius – professor at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen since 1989 – is offering the the Belgian composer Joseph Jongen’s monumental Sonata eroïca. This harmonically appealing work enjoyed an overwhelmingly successful premiere in Brussels at the Palais des Beaux-Arts on 6 November 1930, when the composer performed it to inaugurate that venue’s new organ.