All Episodes

They are fleet of foot and finger, and are the hope for our future. This week, revel in the talent of an international array of soloists, recorded during one of the world’s most prestigeous contests for young players. You may already know about Bach and Widor, even Messiaen, Middleschulte and Calvin Hampton. But soon you’ll know why they applauded mightily for Christian Schmitt, Hyun Jung Kim, Eva Bublova and Cameron Carpenter. Prizes of up to $25,000 were offered. Can you pick the winners. Tune in for Part 1 of 3 in a series of Calgary Festival Highlights.

Old world resonances come together in new world experiences on this week’s show, it’s a discovery of colorful and unusual works on African-American themes. Noel DaCosta adapts Nigerian tunes in his Ukom Memory Songs for organ and percussion, Dezsö Antalffy transforms Black spirituals in a splendid solo fantasy from the 1930s, and Pulitzer Prize-winner George Walker evokes images of craggy heights in his new solo titled Spires. Mickey Thomas Terry provides personal glimpses to repertoire which juxtaposes light and shade with vivid result. Duke Ellington’s urbanaty, southern spirituals and Nigerian funeral chants all figure in our program of music on African American themes. We’re blending Black and White together, with colorful results, this week’s broadcast.

We may properly give Handel credit for inventing the organ concert, but as this program reveals, Italian composers were on the scene, both before and afterwards. The true father of the ‘concerto proper’ was Arcangelo Corelli, whose grand works proved attractive to an English arranger. Vivaldi included the organ amongst groups of other solo instruments, and Bach transformed Vivaldi’s string pieces into recital music for virtuoso organists, who also are well served by Alfredo Casella’s Romantic Concerto from 1926, a sonorous extravagance. Join us for this special collection, Concertos a la Carte.

The sound of music creates a sense of place, but on this week’s show we fill that place with images and colors through works inspired by stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals. From the Rose Windows at the Sacred Heart Basilica in Paris, or the Church of Saint Ouen in Rouen expressed through works of Henri Mulet and Marcel Dupré, to the picturesque Tiffany windows at First Presbyterian, Topeka, Kansas, and some movements commissioned on their behalf from composer Dan Locklair, you’ll be amazed at the juxtaposition of these art forms. See the light and hear the colors - organ works on pictoral themes - as they resonate through Windows of Opportunity.

Obviously, his fingers do the talking. Though he’s spending most of his energy as a guest conductor; and leading revelatory performances by his Vienna Akademie Orchestra, Austrian recitalist Martin Haselböck still savors his first love, which is the pipe organ. This week, we’ll enjoy his lively playing and insightful commentary in selections from Bach to Bruckner. Recorded while in concert on the recent Fritz Noack instrument at the Chapel of the Saint Paul Seminary in Minnesota, you’ll be impressed with his interpretation and technique. Listen to performances of Haydn, Heiller, Froberger and Muffat, plus an improvisation combining Ach, du lieber Augustine and Deep River. Experience the energy of Martin Haselböck Live! Recorded during a special Pipedreams Live! event at the Saint Paul Seminary Chapel in Minnesota.

We trace back root causes on this week’s show, exploring composers in Italy, who laid the foundations for much of what we enjoy in classical music today. And organbuilders, too, whose instruments in Bologna, Treviso, Turin and Pistoia retained an unparalleled degree of simplicity of design and purity of sound across four centuries of European history. Their unique character blooms in the special idioms of Frescobaldi, Pasquini, Valeri and others, as we discover during A Sojourn in Italy.

What’s past was yesterday’s future. In this week’s program we take look in both directions by summing up happenings in the year 2002 and projecting our future into the new year. We’ll have snapshots from a European tour, birthday celebrations for some noted composers, a few highlights from superb concerts we’ve attended, and reflections on important personalities who have gone to their reward. Trumpets sound forth, ancient pipes sing out, and persuasive personalities make the case for the King of Instruments as we celebrate the New Year and savor highlights from the Old. This week we take our annual look back & forward by pondering the pages in An Organist’s Yearbook.

Our songs are without words, colorful portraits painted with tones alone. This week, Paul Manz spins tuneful improvisations around familiar holiday melodies, and then Olivier Messiaen infuses mere chords and rhythms with an almost iconic presence. Shepherds and Magi, heavenly hosts and eternal purposes hover above a mother and child in Bethlehem, as we meditate upon the magic of the season and the mysteries of faith. Nine recitalists, from Germany, Britain, Sweden, the United States and France retell the story of The Nativity of the Lord in a unique expression for holiday reflection.

The charm of folk tunes and the charismatic character of an international array of instruments and soloists enlivens this program of seasonal fare. Franz Lehrndorfer improvises at Saint Boniface Church in Munich, Ann Labounsky plays the work of her famous teacher Jean Langlais, and Todd Wilson shows off the Skinner organ at Cleveland’s Severance Hall. We offer holiday music of the shepherds and angels from around the world. Listen to variations from Munich and Dieppe, hymn preludes from Cleveland and Tacoma, and fine-wrought fantasies from Methuen and Fort Lauderdale as part of A Christmas Festival.

It is a procession of hope, a progression from darkness into light, the weeks of Advent anticipation. But this week, we’ll rush the season a bit, mixing music of joyful abandon with other scores perhaps just a bit reticent and watchful. Joel Martinson, John Rutter, William Mathias and Richard Purvis give fresh interpretation to prophetic scripture, while organists John Gowens, Guy Bovet, Richard Cummins and Frederick Hohman apply the King of Instruments to a celebration of the King of Kings. Poetic reflections and exuberant outbursts proclaim a holy season, with overriding hopes for peace on earth. With carols and anthems, preludes and dances, let instruments and choirs lift your spirits in anticipation of Christmas as we Prepare the Way.

The professional journals show an incredible stream of new organs, but when the national newspapers herald the installation of some lovely instrument, you get a convincing sense that the pipe organ is still a viabile medium for our modern times. In this week’s program, we celebrate two new instruments in Minnesota: the Noack organ at Saint Paul Seminary Chapel, and a new Casavant at Incarnation Lutheran Church, a Saint Paul suburb. We’ll also travel to the cathedral in Treviso, Italy, for a continental perspective. With music from Mozart to Messiaen, David Jenkins, Diane Belcher and Eric Lebrun put three new organs through the motions, proving that the art of the king of instruments is alive and well in the 21st century.

There is nothing like the spontaneity of a live performance. In most cases, you simply had to have been there. To help the rest of us out, this week’s show brings the thrill of it all to our door. Savor the excitement when young virtuoso Raina Wood plays at Emory University, when John Ogasapian explores byways of American music at Saint Thomas Church, New York, and when the duet team of Dee Ann Crossley and Nancy Lancaster make the House of Hope Fisk organ in Saint Paul really sing. All of our music was recorded In Concert and you’ll hear it as it happened.

From sprightly Renaissance dances to grandious symphonies, this week’s show celebrates the many diverse elements which make organ music so remarkable, and a mirror of changes in western culture. Style, emotion, compositional and mechanical ingenuity all play a part in creating music of joy and contemplation, of restraint and exhultation. Whether in folk-song improvisation or anthem accompaniment, flashy toccata or rhumba-inspired trumpet voluntary, the pipe organ does it all. Listen to newly released compact discs from around the world in this sonic spectacular.

Famous also for his superb improvisations and exacting teaching methods, today we remember him through his compositions. This week’s show explores fourteen virtuosic and poetic movements from the pen of French wizard Marcel Dupré. We’ll hear the three Preludes & Fugues of Opus 7 that set the world afire when he was but 26, four of his Opus 50 Inventions, ironic miniatures, concise as an Oriental haiku, and the Seven Pieces which he wrote during his tours in the 1920s and dedicated to friends he made along the way. In his twenties he astonished the world with virtuosity, by his thirties he’d amazed us with his depth, and throughout his career we regarded him as the best there was. The great man himself teams up with his former students and advocates in a musical offering of Seven Pieces, times two.

It’s not every day that Bach’s Royal Instrument gets up and jigs, but in this week’s show the rambunctious rhythms will make very difficult for you to sit still. Whether from an Italian Renaissance chapel or a Baptist Church in Ohio, our music includes everything from Pavans to Rumbas. The music is so enlivening that two of the instruments actually play themselves. Don’t be a wallflower. Groove to Cuban rhythms, an English Bolero, a Viennese Rumba and many other exciting and exotic examples of why your ideas about the pipe organ may need updating. Put on your dancing shoes and join us on the floor!

This week is all about Music in Monasteries as we revel in the glorious sonorities of instruments old and new in abbey churches and convent chapels. Whether playing a Little Oboe Concerto at southern Germany, moderating a solemn mass in Provence, or celebrating new wine on the Indiana plains, these instruments resound in equal measure for prayer AND praise. Worship and the arts come together at Saint Meinrad, Indiana, Saint Maximin, Provence, and half a dozen other destinations where organ music enhances the life experience with beauty, grace and power. Hear works from four centuries as our tour bus takes us on the rounds, fueled by Abbey Gas.

Music for organ and orchestra enjoys an added spice at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. This week we visit the recent 44-stop Casavant pipe organ to evaluate its considerable potential. Consultant Jeff Weiler talks about its varied background and why, despite a modest specification, it does everything an organ must do in a symphonic space. Soloist David Schrader plays colorful solos and teams up with the Grant Park Symphony for works by Samuel Barber, Walter Piston, Leo Sowerby and Michael Colgrass. American concert halls have come to realize that the room is not complete without the presence of the King of Instruments. Understand why and join in a Chicago Celebration: the Casavant organ at Orchestra Hall.

with slideshow, interviews, restored organs of Oaxaca and more! This week we expand our sense of music’s North American history when we visit the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca to hear pipe organs from the 17th and 18th centuries. While we were barely ‘the colonies’ up north, Mexican natives directed by Spanish artisans practiced the art of organbuilding as early as fifty years following the landing of Columbus. With a refreshing and colorful spirit, instruments in the village of Tlacochahuaya, La Soledad Basilica and the Oaxaca Cathedral illuminate the stories of organists Elisa Freixo, Cristina Garcia Banegas and Roberto Fresco. This is a precious heritage, deserving our careful attention and enthusiastic support. Join us south of the border for a Oaxacan Holiday.