Friedrich Wilhelm Markull began his career as a child prodigy and was appointed to the post of organist at Danzig’s magnificent St Mary’s Church when he was only twenty years old. Andrzej Szadejko’s second CD featuring compositions written by the industrious Baltic composer for himself and his Danzig pupils once again brings to light a previously virtually unknown chapter of music history.

Markull had a great influence on Johannes Brahms, who received inspiration in Danzig not only for his own organ compositions but also for the German Requiem. The organ in St Mary’s Church, an instrument with more than fifty stops on three manuals, offered ample opportunities for the realization of the romantic organ sound. Andrzej Szadejko has found an outstanding replacement for the early romantic Danzig instrument, which was completely destroyed during World War II, in the very expertly restored Buchholz organ in Stralsund’s St Nicholas Church.

Whether for the small form of the chorale setting, the classical trio texture, or the grand organ sonata of Mendelssohnian stamp, Szadejko has selected registrations - all of them documented in the lavish booklet supplementing this Super Audio CD - filling the magnificent church interior with splendid sound. In three-dimensional sound the listening experience is simply tremendous: with the organ sound all around us, the perfect illusion of the vast acoustic space of the great Baltic cathedral is reproduced.