Bach in Istanbul

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Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, basilica, Benjamin Alard, Dario Castello, Genügsamkeit, harpsichord, Heinrich Scheidemann, Ich ende behende, Istanbul, Istanbul Bach Days, Italian, Kuijken Ensemble, Marie Kuijken, Monteverdi, Purcell, Seufzer Tränen Kummer Not, Sigiswald Kuijken, soprano, St. Anthony of Padua Church, Today's Zaman, Turkish, violin

On 16 October 2014, the Kuijken Ensemble will perform at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Istanbul as part of the Turkish capital’s yearly Bach Days.

Violinist Sigiswald Kuijken will be joined by harpsichordist Benjamin Alard and soprano Marie Kuijken in the program “Towards Bach” that will feature works by Castello, Monteverdi, Scheidemann and Purcell as well as Bach’s Sonata (BWV 1019) and the soprano arias Genügsamkeit (from BWV 144), Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not (from BWV 21) and Ich ende behende (from BWV 57).

St. Anthony of Padua Church, a minor basilica, was built in the early twentieth century by the local Italian community. Before he was elected to the papacy, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was attached to the church when he was the Vatican‘s ambassador to Turkey.

– Today’s Zaman

An Organ for Bach in Hamburg

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Flentrop Orgelbouw, Friedrich Stellwagen, Gottfried Fritzsche, Hamburg, Hamburg University of Music and Theatre, Hans Scherer, Heinrich Scheidemann, Johann Adam Reincken, Lüneburg, manual, organ, organ pipe, pedal, Second World War, St. Catherine Church

Now one of the five main churches in the center of Hamburg, St. Catherine Church was originally built to serve fishermen on an island in the Elbe river in 1250. Along with its bell tower soaring 117m into the air, the church’s great organ attracted many visitors, including keyboard masters Heinrich Scheidemann and Johann Adam Reincken, and in 1701, as a sixteen year old, Johann Sebastian Bach traveled 50km to St. Catherine Church from Lüneburg just to experience Reincken’s playing of the instrument’s four manuals and pedals.

Bach was fascinated with the beauty and diversity of the great instrument, and he was particularly impressed by its reeds. Luckily, seventeen stops of the organ survived the Second World War, and most of these 520 pipes fashioned by early organ builders, including Hans Scherer, Gottfried Fritzsche and Friedrich Stellwagen, are being incorporated by the Dutch builder Flentrop Orgelbouw into “An Organ for Bach,” a joint effort of St. Catherine Church and the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre to reconstruct an instrument typical of the early Baroque.

The newly reconstructed Rückwerk was installed in 2009 and since then has been used in church services and concerts. The second stage, the main case with Hauptwerk, Oberwerk and Brustwerk, is nearing completion, and the Pedal division, with its two towers, will be the third phase of this project. Final assembly and voicing will be undertaken during the first half of 2013, culminating in a solemn inauguration of the organ in June of next year.