Newswise — ITHACA, N.Y. – Musicians and scholars from around the globe will gather at Cornell University March 8 – 13 to celebrate Cornell’s new baroque pipe organ, only the second of its kind in the world.
The $2 million organ reconstructs the tonal design of the celebrated Charlottenburg-Schlosskapelle organ, built early in the 18th century in Berlin by Arp Schnitger, one of history’s greatest organ builders. That organ was destroyed during bombing in World War II. This reconstruction required seven years of research in an international, collaborative effort by Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences and the Gothenburg Organ Art Center (GOArt) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The organ is expected to last hundreds of years.
The concert festival and conference is entitled “Keyboard Culture in 18th-Century Berlin and the German Sense of History” and will explore music and culture in 18th-century Berlin. The festival will feature both music from the baroque period for organ, fortepiano, and other keyboards, as well as a new multi-media composition commissioned for the event.
The keynote concert will feature Harald Vogel, a professor of organ at the University of the Arts Bremen and founder of the North German Organ Academy, performing music by Sweelinck, Buxtehude, Bruhns, and the Bachs on Saturday, March 12 at 5:30 p.m., at Anabel Taylor Chapel. The concert will be repeated Sunday, March 13 at 8 p.m.
Other performers include Jacques van Oortmerssen, professor of organ at the Amsterdam Conservatory, who will perform an all-J. S. Bach program on Thursday, March 10, at 6:30 p.m. and again at 8:30 p.m., and Jean Ferrard, professor at the Royal Conservatory, Brussels, who will present works from the 17th-century Low Countries on Saturday, March 12, at 12:30 p.m. Both concerts will be in Anabel Taylor Chapel.
Conference speakers include keynote speaker Laurenz Lütteken, professor of musicology at the University of Zurich, on Thursday, March 10th at 4:30pm, and Munetaka Yokota, designer of Cornell’s organ, on the afternoon of Saturday, March 12.
The festival is co-sponsored by the Institute for German Cultural Studies at Cornell, the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, and the Department of Music, with funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Cornell Council for the Arts, and the University Lectures Committee.
Website on Cornell's baroque organ: http://baroqueorgan.cornell.edu/about/press.cfm
Website with concert schedule: http://baroqueorgan.cornell.edu/news/events.cfm
Website for festival details: http://westfield.org/berlin
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