Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #9!

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Matthias Schneider is the Professor of Church Music and Organ at the Greifswald University and the president of the GdO (Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde -Society of Organ Friends).

"And then he wrote his own tries, but not to play these pieces one to one within the service but to learn how to manage, how to improvise, how to get the right counterpoint to cantus firmus. In my opinion, this is not music to be played, as we do today but music as a starting for its own improvisations."

​Video version of our conversation:

Relevant links:
Greifswald University
Geselschaft der Orgelfreunde

​Enjoy and share your comments below.

If you like these conversations with the experts from the organ world, please help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends.

In my opinion, one of the best organ improvisers alive, Sietze de Vries from the Netherlands shares his inspiring insights about improvisation on the organ.

Enjoy and share your comments below.

If you like these conversations with the experts from the organ world, please help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends.

Relevant links:
Sietze's website
Sietze's music albums
Sietze de Vries profile on Facebook

"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:

Enjoy and share your comments below.

If you like these conversations with the experts from the organ world, please help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends.

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

Welcome to the Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #6! 

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Today's guest is Hans-Ola Ericsson, a world-renown Swedish organist, pedagogue, and composer, currently the head of organ and church music department at McGill University in Canada. He shares his expertise and insights on modern organ music, the music of Bach, earlier music, his compositions, and of course his interest in the nature of sound, because he is also the creator of Studio Acusticum project in Piteå, Sweden.

Below is the video version of our conversation:

Enjoy and share your comments below.

If you like these conversations with the experts from the organ world, please help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends.

Relevant links:
Organ and Church Music Department at McGill University
Hans-Ola Ericsson's recordings on Spotify
Studio Acusticum project
Hans-Ola Ericsson's profile on Facebook

Welcome to the Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #5! 

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Today's guests are two experts of Bach organ music - Dr. Mary Murrell Faulkner and Dr. Quentin Faulkner. They have just returned from their 4th trip to Central Germany where they led Bach's Organ World tour. Today they share their insights and wisdom about the instruments that Bach played or visited, about performance of his music, and what it feels to sit on the same bench that our master composer sat on some 300 years ago.

Enjoy this inspiring conversation and share your comments below.

If you like these conversations with the experts from the organ world, please help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends.

Relevant links:
J.S. Bach's Keyboard Technique: A Historical Introduction
J.S. Bach - Basic Organ Works
The Registration of J.S. Bach's Organ Works
Wiser Than Despair: The Evolution of Ideas in the Relationship of Music and the Christian Church
Duetto: Early Music for Keyboard-Four Hands
Concept Tours