The Pipe Organ in China Project Website: Updates for June 2023

30 June 2023

There are no updates to the Census for June 2023. This month marks the fifth anniversary of the opening of the POCP Website.

However, word has reached the Project about the long-deferred installation of two new pipe organs, both now in train.

First, installation of the new Casavant organ (Op. 3925, IV/43 [54]) at the Cathedral in Macau will finally begin in December this year. This electro-pneumatic action organ was announced for installation in 2018, postponed to 2019. Logistic and structural problems, and then the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s “Zero COVID” policy, were responsible for four further years of delay. It is hoped that the organ will now be ready to be inaugurated in early 2024.

And the new Diego Cera Organ Builders’ III/34 instrument for St. Ignatius’ Cathedral at Zikawei, Shanghai, mentioned in What’s New for 27 February 2021, is now being installed with a projected completion and dedication date sometime in October this year. As the Project learns more about this, we will post further details.

On the performance/education front, French organist Olivier Latry was in Hong Kong in early June to play Saint-Saëns 3 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic (the only organ+orchestra work they know, it seems.) While there, he also held a master class on HKG1989 for four local organists, all of whom chose works by late-Romantic and 20^th C. French composers (see program below).

Organs in the Census: 203

(We have temporarily lost our ability to post statistics. Please check back next month.)