Liner notes Hans Janssen

I was listening intensively to the still raw files of this cd when the doorbell rang. Quite disturbing, since I was enjoying so much the refreshing newness of the approach, the language and the pronunciation. I was completely immersed in it. So I didn’t turn the volume down, and just opened the door. There she was. My neighbour. What could possibly be going on here, or better, there, just behind me? She tried to look past me, curious to find out for herself who was producing that strange and unfamiliar organ music in my living room. I got the feeling there and then, in that doorway, while my brother let loose on the organ in ‘The Admonition Church’ in Zaandam, the unmistakable results of which splashed right past me into the arms and ears of my neighbour, of being a certain man who once appeared on the television screen in our youth. He was filmed and interviewed while listening to the St Matthew Passion, singing it out loud, for himself. I had the same kind of embarrassment. Trapped. A mixture of shame, flushed cheeks, feeling caught out, and – at the same time – having the sudden need to explain your personal pride in one way or another. I stammered something like, “Well, look, you know, I have this brother…”, while what I really wanted to say was, “Yes, come in please, you are very welcome, this is great, we should listen together. Prick up your ears, consider how beautiful this is, what a wealth of sounds and roars and rumble, cackle and chatter, what throbs and twists, what sighing, what melody and rhythm.” And then I would have liked to continue with: "I, being an air child, think this is fantastic. Especially because that brother of mine is more of an earth child, or a fire child, I don't know exactly, but he knows on this CD - his latest – how to escape both the boredom (on the one hand) and the sacredness (other side) of the original religious context of that organ world. Sonorous, with drama, but also light-footed, sparkling, sometimes beautifully fading away, almost disappearing, and then swelling again as Cor Steyn knew how to do so well. Ever heard of this guy Steyn? He was very important, in our youth. He explored the limits of the organ in his own ways, and in its own rights. He even defined – I dare to say – in a way the gloriousness of the daisies in the embankment opposite the house of my youth." My neighbor looked at me inquisitively, and had her own thoughts, I gathered. But she concluded I was seemingly all right, and decided to go home.

Hans Janssen