Kaija’s organ is ready to resound
NewsThe majestic organ that Kaija Saariaho donated to her hometown concert hall with a gift of one million Euros will be inaugurated by Olivier Latry on New Year’s Day.
Latry, organist of Notre-Dame in Paris, was one of the key advisers on installing and testing the Musiikkitalo organ.
Later next week, Jan Lehtola will perform Kaija’s organ concerto Maan varjot with the Helsinki Philharmonic.
More here.
Good news. I went twice in the Musiikkitalo I have to say that I was impress by the beauty of the concert hall with those bay windows aroud. But I was a little bit disappointed by the sound. In Scandinavia I prefere Kopenhagen for the new concert halls in the North and the best in this part of Europe is for me without doubts Gothenburg who had a new organ recently.
The acoustics were originally designed with an organ in mind. It has improved now with the arrival of the missing element.
Interesting to see Olivier Latry making a bit of a specialism of developing new instruments – he did the Montréal one as well, and was part of the team that did the Radio France auditorium and the Philharmonie de Paris ones (and, I’m sure, several others). It’d be interesting to see how different these instruments sound.
It will be the organ builders/voicing team who mostly determine what the organ will sound like. It wouldn’t be that difficult to come up with a theoretical specification for a large concert hall organ, as there is a lot of crossover on what large instruments need and have (If you look at the specifications of most English cathedral instruments, on paper they are remarkably similar). You could say I want the organ to sound French, English, Neo-Baroque, Romantic etc, and the builders would voice the instrument accordingly. They might say we haven’t got room/budget for xyz, but really the hard work is done by the organ builders.
4.4 MILLION euros for another ugly and little used luxury organ. I hope they don’t plan on asking the public, the government or anyone else for any more money for the next 20 years.
Foolish and asinine, and not much of a tribute to the composer.
Finland is with Germany and Austria the country of classical music, Helsinki is the capital of Finland. if we are in the biggest concert hal of the country…. Think about it it’s not so much 4.4M.
Congratulations to the government and people of Helsinki!
I live in a city that has just contracted a single baseball player for 700 million USD, and has spent millions of “taxpayer dollars” on various sports venues.
By the way, we have an exceptionally fine Glatter-Götz Organ that is very much used and appreciated… although some have alleged that it is not so pretty. (But it is! Frank Gehry helped design it)
There are not enough organ donors in the world.