The Pipe Organ in China Project: Updates for April 2024
30 April 2024A new 4-manual and pedal Rieger organ with 86 stops, PEK2024, has been installed in the new ‘Beijing Performing Arts Center’, which is actually not in Bejing itself but in the city of Tongzhou, which now lies on the eastern side of a huge Beijing administrative district surrounding the Mainland Chinese capital. The Project assumes that this organ and the new hall were planned long prior to the COVID-19 epidemic, and that installation was delayed as a result. The Belgian firm, Kahle Acoustics, was a consultant on the project, and interesting details of their work on the hall can be found here: https://kahle.be/en/ref/beijingPerformingArtsCentreTongzhou.html
The pages for FCW1931 and FCW2005 have been updated. The Project thanks our correspondent, Emily Ke, for a photo we have used for the latter installation. The page for HKG2009 has also been updated, and the Project is grateful for new photos by organ builder, Cealwyn Tagle.
The Links page has also been updated.
Finally, clips from the Jesuita Cantat 2.0 concert, held in November 2023 as part of the 3rd Hong Kong Hymnos Festival, have now been uploaded to YouTube. Sung by Vox Antiqua, and conducted by Project founder Prof. David Francis Urrows, this program included Henry du Mont’s Messe royale du première Ton, sung in the form published and used in Shanghai by the Jesuits in the nineteenth century, and accompanied for the first time in 150 years by the ensemble formed by François Ravary SJ, of organ, dizi, and sheng.
Another major work, part of which was performed at Zikawei, was the Salut pour le jour du Saint Sacrement by Louis Lambillotte SJ, one of Fr. Ravary’s teachers. Again, this is probably the first time in at least a century since this work was last performed, at least publicly. Other works by Lambillotte, as well as compositions by Jules Dufour d’Astafort SJ, one of Lambillotte’s students and later his literary executor, and Saverio Mercadante, were also on the program.
The clips of these works from this concert, as well as music from the 2022 Jesuita Cantat 1.0 performance, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@voxantiquahk
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