Graeme Kay
Choir & Organ
June 2013

Like a set dressing for The Snow Queen, the IV/91 Van den Heuvel organ of Danish Radio's ultra-modern French-designed concert hall presents as a caseless forest of glittering silver pipes. Naji Hakim's editless recording exploits its super- coloristic specification (check out the 'Harmonia Aetheria' string mixture), anthologising works inspired by Danish and Lebanese melodic and poetic sources, and the writings of Pastor Hanna Margrethe Tougaard. To the already-recorded Sakskobing Praeludier and Glenalmond Suite Hakim adds a Prelude and Tanz-toccata I love the colourful world, and three sets of variations. Hakim's spiritual exuberance is expressed in harmonically ear-tickling music which sings and dances, accelerating, in his inimitably breathless toccatas, to the insane-sounding speeds of whirling dervishes. Has anyone thought of letting Naji loose on a Wurlitzer?