Janis Kalnins on Latvian organ culture

Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #7!

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Janis Kalnins is an organ builder from Latvia (Lithuania's northern neighbor country on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea). Together with his team he has built many new instruments and restored some of the most important historical organs in the region, including one of the oldest organs in the Baltic states (Cornelius Rhaneus organ in Ugale, Latvia from 1701).

His biggest source of inspiration is Baltic organ building tradition and he is passionate about continuing it in his own work.

"I was talking with the Danish organist Ole Olesen and asked him the question of why the organ sometimes has an evacuant? It's an absolutely useless stop - you simply open the valve, and when you finish playing, you just let the wind out of the bellows. I have never seen an organ where the wind stays without any additional pumping for more than a few minutes. It's not a hermetical system. And he then told me that in the Renaissance times the wind somehow was considered to be similar with the Holy Ghost because the wind is the spirit of organ. The wind makes the organ come alive. And it is a bad behavior to leave the wind without work. It's like you are wasting the Holy Ghost. It's something religious."

Video version of our conversation:

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​Relevant links:
www.pipeorgans.lv
www.pianoforte.lv