wife Cécile's cousin Friedrich Schlemmer and, probably through him, access to the organ in the Katharinenkirche built in 1779–1780 by Franz and Philipp Stumm. August 1840 saw the fruits of Mendelssohn's labour: his first organ recital in the Thomaskirche. The proceeds from the concert were to go towards a statue of Bach in the vicinity of the Thomaskirche. Most of the repertoire in the concert had been played by Mendelssohn elsewhere, but nevertheless as he wrote to his mother, "I practised so much the previous eight days that I could barely stand on my own two feet and walked along the street in nothing but organ passages." The concert was wholly devoted to Bach's music, except for an improvised "free fantasy" at the end. In the audience was the elderly Friedrich Rochlitz, founding editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, a journal that had promoted the music of Bach: Rochlitz is reported to have declared afterwards, "I shall depart now in peace, for never shall I hear anything finer or more sublime." The recital started with the St Anne prelude and fugue BWV 552. The only chorale prelude was Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele BWV 654 from the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes, a favourite of both Mendelssohn and Schumann. Until that time very few of these or the shorter chorale preludes from the Orgelbüchlein had been published. Mendelssohn prepared an edition of both sets that was published in 1844 by Breitkopf and Härtel in Leipzig and by Coventry and Hollier in London. At about the same time the publishing house of Peters in Leipzig produced an edition of Bach's complete organ works in nine volumes edited by Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl and Ferdinand Roitzsch. The E flat prelude and fugue BWV 552 appears in Volume III (1845), the chorale preludes BWV 669–682, 684–689 in Volume VI and VII (1847) and BWV 683 in Volume V (1846) with chorale preludes from the Orgelbüchlein. In 1845, while Robert was recovering from a nervous breakdown and a few months prior to the completion of his piano concerto, the Schumanns rented a pedalboard to place under their upright piano. As Clara recorded at the time, "On April 24th we got on hire a pedal-board to attach below the pianoforte, and we had great pleasure from it. Our chief object was to practice organ playing. But Robert soon found a higher interest in this instrument and composed