Nachtorgel bei Kerzenschein (The organ at night by candlelight) - a dream come true. For more than ten years now, large numbers of music-lovers from far and near have been thronging to the international Summer Concerts at the Bartholomäuskirche in Dornum on Fridays during the summer months. As the night sets in, the small East Frisian village church is a place away from noisy everyday life in which they can pause to look inward and be spiritually stimulated and replenished by the assorted selection of music presented. With its two tiers of galleries and Baroque ornamentation that is unusually rich, friendly and luminous for East Frisia, the compact thirteenth-century red-brick church, together with its blocky free-standing bell tower and the nearby 300-year-old beech tree stand on a terp - a hillock raised to protect inhabitants from floodwaters. It contains an organ built by Arp Schnitger pupil Gerhard von Holy in 1710/11. The instrument is a special gem and of European significance, being the only fully-fledged Hanseatic city organ in its ideal form with three manuals and pedal that has survived in a small village church. Its magnificently radiant chorus, luminous reeds, singing flutes and open diapasons include pipework that is now nearly five hundred years old and produces unexpectedly rich sound.
The intimate atmosphere of the candlelit church prepares listeners for a special listening experience; sitting extremely close to the source of the sounds - right on top of the pipes as it were - they experience how eloquent the king of instruments can be. How finely the individual pipes differ in their vowel colouring and production of consonants when they speak! The sound is animated by a "breathing wind". Touchingly tender flute tones cause one to turn inward, to listen to the voices of the heart.
So it was in August 2009, when "The organ at night" opened its doors in conjunction with the East Frisian Musical Summer. Inside the overcrowded village church, the audience were spellbound by a programme that centred around Henry Purcell (1659-1695), George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and took a journey through time and space, ranging from the Gothic music of the Buxheimer Orgelbuch from the time when the church was built to Viennese Classicism, from Italy to North Germany and England, from Christmas to the end of the church year, from sundown to dawn. We have attempted to capture something of the special atmosphere of this concert, which was also recorded by Norddeutscher Rundfunk. With Sweet bird - the nightingale dreams, we invite you to take the time to listen attentively and, beyond stylistically elevated superficial brilliance, to experience the secrets of the night: Music for a while.
Here you may listen to Gudrun Sidonie Otto (soprano) and Andreas Liebig (organ) during the recording session of their new CD „Sweet bird“ at the historic organ by Gerhard von Holy (1710/11) in Dornum (East Frisia/Germany)
