Concert hall sells its organ for one Euro
NewsHamburg’s Laeiszhalle is planning to sell its organ next year for a token amount.
The instrument, installed in 1951 with 4,527 pipes, has been declared incompatible with the hall’s acoustic.
The bargain buyer is a church community in Münchberg, Bavaria. Its members will have to find 400,000 Euros in transportation costs.
Not so much incompatible with the hall’s acoustic, but rather that the ethos of the instrument built, IIRC, in mid-1950s, was neo-classic/”organ reform”, and not very well suited to romantic use, eg Mahler’s 8th.
I have nothing against organ reform, but… horses for courses.
Something like a copy of of a Ladegast instrument would be wonderful, and given that his organs at Merseburg and Schwerin cathedrals were fully conservatively restored not very long ago, also that of Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche, means that experienced organ builders are around to do this sort of job. Here’s hoping for a successful outcome.
And the fürst was one too many, just like Hollywood. You know, I met one of them, just like Renee, Fleming, not that she’s any wiser, but watch out with them.
“So, you want to start apologizing, do you? Well start going back as far as you can remember such behavior, and it won’t be far enough.
“Sure, sir, just like having you give me directions as to where to stand until I’ve going tumbling down the stairs back first this time, only with Clara it was…..”
The Ryanair school of organ selling
Not uncommon… I think the ORTF in Paris got rid of their big Gonzalez instrument in Studio 104/Salle Olivier Messiaen for €1, just because Ton Koopman refused to play it.
I’d have kept the organ…
So they decide 70 years after the organ was installed that it’s incompatible with the hall’s acoustics? Yeah, right! Whoever is now running the hall was looking for some way to get rid of the instrument which they probably simply don’t like. OR…they didn’t want a competitor for the larger instrument in the Elbphilharmonie.
I do wish that journalists stopped just copying Reuter/AFP etc. Bulletins and give us some useful context, analysis and just a touch of investigation.
thanks.
Even the scariest looking ‘ladies of the night’ on Capp St. in S.F., get a few hundred times more than that for selling their organs to the public.