We are delighted to release the final 2-CD volume in Margaret Phillips’s criticallyacclaimed 20-CD cycle of recordings of JS Bach’s complete organ works: The Art of Fugue - Bach’s monumental exploration of fugal and canonic techniques.
Begun in 2002 and completed in 2020, Margaret Phillips’s recordings of Bach’s organ works are the only complete set by a British organist to use predominantly early 18th century historic instruments in the Netherlands and Germany, together with a few more recent instruments in historic style in Paris, Sint-Niklaas (Belgium), Cambridge, and this final recording featuring the 2012 Richards, Fowkes and Co. organ in St George’s, Hanover Square, London. The cycle has been praised as one of the finest sets of Bach’s organ music by journals across the world.
One of Britain’s outstanding concert organists and teachers, Margaret Phillips has played in concert halls, churches and cathedrals throughout Europe and in the US, Canada, Australia, and Mexico. Her numerous recordings include the complete organ works of Bach, Mendelssohn, Saint- Saëns, and Stanley. She is also much in demand as teacher, masterclass tutor and jury member, and from 1996 to 2021 she was Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music in London. Performance highlights in recent years include celebrity recitals at Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Festival Hall, the last of which was broadcast by BBC Radio 3. In 2015 she gave two marathon series, each of eighteen concerts, of the complete works of Bach: one at St George’s Hanover Square, and one at the English Organ School and Museum. The latter was founded in 1994 by Margaret Phillips and her husband in former chapel premises in Milborne Port, Somerset, where there is a small collection of organs by English organ builders from the 18th century to the present day.
‘the most elegant, beautiful realizations of the works of the great master that I have ever had the pleasure to hear (and I own five other complete Bach series!). There is absolutely nothing not to love about this series: the performances range from magnificently grand and stately, to sublimely sensitive and delicate.’ The Diapason, January 2014
‘Gary Cole's engineering is as ever, top-drawer, matching Margaret Phillips's superb musicianship’ Gramophone Awards issue 2011
‘...when it comes to a purely aural experience. Phillips’ playing - in this volume on a wonderfully singing Drapps/Flentrop instrument - banishes all cares. The results are outstandingly clear and vibrant... a truly scholastic pilgrimage.’ Organists’ Review March 2016
