Received 50 EUR tip for this recital!

Yesterday I had a pleasure playing a private organ concert for a group of French Canadians at the Aula Parva auditorium of Vilnius University.

This organ is a one manual instrument which originally was built by the anonymous builder from the Vilnius organ school in the 18th century for a Franciscan church. It was closed after the 1863 uprising by the regime and in 1864 was transferred to one of the chapels of St John's church. At the end of the 19th century the organ was in a very poor condition - only some portions of the facade were intact. In 1979, when Vilnius University celebrated it's 400th anniversary Vilnius Organ Workshop brought it back to life and built it in the Aula Parva auditorium. Now it is used for various academic celebrations and private organ recitals. Sometimes our Unda Maris studio has their practices there too when St John's church is occupied. Here's the specification of the organ:

http://www.vargonai.lt/vargonai_vilnius_aulos.htm

I played 10 chorales from the Clavierubung Part I of Johann Ludwig Krebs, who was one of the best students of Johann Sebastian Bach. This collection was published in 1744 and comprises of 13 chorales. Each of the chorale has 3 parts - a praeambulum, a chorale and chorale harmonization written in basso continuo notation (soprano and bass parts along with some numbers above the bass).

I chose these chorales to keep the performance along with my introduction of the organ and the program under one hour:

1. Praeambulum (& Fugetta) supra 'Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr'
2. Praeambulum supra 'Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten'
3. Praeambulum supra 'Jesu, meine Freude'
4. Praeambulum supra 'Christ lag in Todesbanden'
5. Praeambulum supra 'Auf meinen lieben Gott'
6. Praeambulum supra 'Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut'
7. Praeambulum supra 'Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan'
8. Praeambulum supra 'Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott'
9. Praeambulum supra 'Von Gott will ich nicht lassen'
10. Praeambulum supra 'Jesus, meine Zuversicht'

I asked one of my Unda Maris organ studio students, @drugelis to turn some of the pages for me in places where I couldn't manage myself too easily. Considering this was her first time, she did it quite well. Maybe in the future she can do it with the feeling that fits the character of the piece - slower, when the tempo is slow and faster, when the tempo is fast. But anyway, she was a big help.

After the concert an old lady came up to me and said: "your page turner looks like my 13 year old grand daughter." She even showed me the photo. Another old lady gave me a 50 EUR tip. When I texted about this to @laputis, she wrote: "Yay! It will be for movies." I don't know... I would rather buy some 309 STEEM, but we'll see, haha! Going to movies are important for us too.

@drugelis wanted to have some pieces to prepare for our weekly Secrets of Organ Playing contest but trios with pedal require more time. So I assigned her to play the last parts of Krebs' chorales but without the middle parts, only soprano in the right hand and bass in the left part. I hope she can make a recording before Monday for the contest of the 1st chorale in the collection, Allein Gott.

And now I invite you to listen to my recital. I livestreamed it to Facebook and later uploaded to YouTube for you to enjoy. Let me know what you think.

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Run by contrabourdon and organduo—supporting the community with regular contests: Easy SBI Contest, Pinky and Spiky Drawing Contest and Secrets of Organ Playing Contest. Also powering the popular giphy bot and donating STEEM for deemarshall's creative contests.