Virtuoso organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707) was the predominant North German composer of his generation and the leading organist of the period. His dramatic organ works, virtuoso masterpieces of Baroque contrapuntal style and structure, would greatly influence his successors – including a young student of his named Johann Sebastian Bach.

Walter Kraft’s traversal of Buxtehude’s organ works was one of the most ambitious undertakings in the early years of VOX. These landmark recordings, a triumph of the early stereophonic era, were made in 1957 in the Marienkirche, Lübeck where Buxtehude himself had been music director – and document a master organist of the mid-20th century at the height of his powers and during a period of interpretive transition.