Orgelstunde an Christi Himmelfahrt

Orgelstunde

The program of this organ concert combines very old and very new music - music that has not yet been written down. Martin Sturm's improvisations, to which he himself gave the titles “Metamorphosis”, “Moment musical” and “Symphonic Epilogue”, are both a commentary on and a supplement to organ works by Michelangelo Rossi and Johann Caspar Kerll as well as Max Reger and Jehan Alain, to which an arrangement of a well-known aria from Bach's Hunting Cantata BWV 208 is added as a special “delicacy”.

Orgelstunde

Anton Bruckner was considered one of the greatest organists of his time: “Nothing like this had ever been heard before,” César Franck, perhaps the greatest organ composer of his time, recalled of Bruckner's organ playing in Paris in 1869. However, Bruckner excelled above all as an improviser, while he made virtually no appearance as an organ composer or performer. Bruckner's surviving organ pieces, on the other hand, are merely study works from his early period, and there are also some improvisation sketches which give an idea that Bruckner thought of the organ as a symphonic composer in the same way as he did when preparing his large orchestral scores. Organ arrangements of his symphonies can therefore also be a way of approaching the organist Bruckner. With his complete recording of the Bruckner symphonies, Hansjörg Albrecht has now joined the ranks of prominent Bruckner interpreters as an organist! The exciting program is complemented by a “Bruckner Window” by the Munich composer Enjott Schneider.

Orgelstunde

The spiritual focus of this program is not the prominent names of Camille Saint-Saëns or Max Reger, whose works form the weighty framework of this organ lesson, but the coordinated miniatures by Nadia Boulanger and Philipp Maintz. At the request of Angela Metzger, the latter has composed a cycle of short organ pieces especially for use in the concert hall, the structure and charm of which unfold in particular in combination with the Trois Pièces by Nadia Boulanger. One of these three pieces will even be premiered in today's concert.

Orgelstunde

Jeremy Joseph, who took over this organ lesson at short notice for his teacher Martin Haselböck, who was ill, is no stranger to Berlin audiences: six years ago, he was already a duo partner for Gottlieb Wallisch in the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus Berlin, with whom he performed a brilliant program Organ & Piano. In this solo program, he spans an arc from Johann Sebastian Bach and Max Reger - each represented with major works - to Arnold Schoenberg as a “modern classic”, whose variations on a theme by Johann Sebastian Bach are now also part of the standard repertoire.

Orgelstunde am Karsamstag