Cameron’s Berlin organ crash

From a correspondent at the Philharmonie:

Cameron Carpenter opened the organ season of the Berlin Philharmonie for the third year in a row under the title of “organist in residence”. The hall was nearly full for his all Bach program. At the end of the first work on the second half (Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor BWV 537), a very loud note continued to sound in the Philharmonie’s Schuke organ (ostensibly newly refurbished), causing Carpenter to leave the stage after accepting the applause. Nearly a fifteen minute period ensued during which various hall technicians tried to repair the organ, and after the instrument was turned off then back on the sound continued. Some patrons were seen running from the auditorium with hands over ears. Finally an announcement was made that the problem was unrepairable, and that Carpenter would continue on the piano rather than end the concert. The Steinway D was brought up on the stage elevator and Carpenter appeared, beginning with Chopin’s Etude in C# Minor (Op. 10, No. 4) and continuing with selections from JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (I believe the D Major from Book II), a work by Medtner (I didn’t catch which one, about four minutes long in a minor key), Grainger’s “Handel in the Strand”, an improvisation in jazz style on Gershwin’s ‘Embraceable You’, and finally the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, to wild reception. Encores at the piano included (I think) Rachmaninoff’s arrangement of Bach’s Sinfonia from Cantata 29, and a jazz rendering of “Bist Du bei Mir’.