Weihnachtliche Orgelmusik

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 am Karsamstag

Orgelstunde an Christi Himmelfahrt

Organo con stromenti

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.

Insight Organ with Thomas Cornelius

As the name suggests, »Insight Organ« focuses on the »king of instruments«. How does an organ work? What is a windchest, what is a stop? Just a couple of the many questions that organist Thomas Cornelius answers clearly at this discussion concert in Hamburg’s Körber Haus. The handful of organ pipes that he has with him and the organ samples on his computer enable him to give a deep insight into how this many-faceted instrument works. If you attended his course, you are sure to discover completely new sides to the king of instruments at your next organ concert: the Elbphilharmonie organ can be heard in all its splendour on 11 March 2024, with Zuzana Ferjenčíková operating the manuals and the pedalboard. The Elbphilharmonie’s »Insight« events give people deeper insights into musical phenomena. Experts in different fields explain aspects from their day-to-day work clearly and entertainingly and are happy to answer the public’s questions.

Zuzana Ferjenčíková, organ

When a composer writes a work they have a clear idea or vision of how they want it to sound. Sometimes though, other tonal ideas emerge in retrospect, or history decides that a work can, in fact, sound quite different. That is the moment for the arranger to step in and tailor a new »tonal garment« for the piece, as it were. In the case of Franz Liszt’s symphonic poems, for instance, this was done by his contemporary Alexander Winterberger and the modern visionary Jean Guillou. Winterberger turned the piano variations on »Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen« into a veritable organ work – so successfully, in fact, that the original piano version is hardly ever played nowadays. Guillou, on the other hand, himself a first-rate virtuoso, took Liszt’s vision of the Orpheus saga and expanded on it to create a fabulous orgy of sound for organ. Now the Slovak organist and former Guillou student Zuzana Ferjenčíková is just the right person to perform this repertoire. Blessed with a phenomenal technique and driven by an incessant inner passion, she breathes new life into these arrangements at her Elbphilharmonie debut – which includes Sergei Rachmaninov’s famous »Isle of the Dead« and keyboard works by Mozart, one of which Ferjenčíková has arranged herself. Finally, Guillou’s truly titanic fantasy on Hyperion, the divine messenger of light, is an original work written for the organ.>

Iveta Apkalna, Organ

Franz Liszt was one of the greatest artists of his time. A marvellous virtuoso, a master of self-expression and, later in life, a monk-like recluse. That being the case, his music is both a playground for the piano virtuoso and a canon of equal significance on a metaphysical level too. And this is especially true of his organ music. Liszt’s programme music takes on a whole new dimension on this king of instruments – be it his portrayal of the titan Prometheus, the incredibly vivid vision of Francis of Paola walking on water, or the colossal »Funérailles«. In this solo performance, Iveta Apkalna, the organist-in-residence at the Elbphilharmonie, places the Hungarian-Austrian composer in context alongside French organ music. Works can be heard by the Romantics and by Liszt contemporaries Gabriel Dupont, Gabriel Pierné, Léon Boëllmann and César Franck, whose magnificent »Pièce héroïque« with its steadily intensifying dynamics closes the first half.