1773 Pfliegler organ at Altenburg Monastery, Austria

With themes from ancient chants and traditional hymn, we celebrate a season of reawakening on our next Pipedreams program, exploring four centuries of music for the Resurrection Festival. Through performances on historic instruments at Altenburg Abbey and the Martini Church in Groningen, the Netherlands, we’ll discover that Johann Sebastian was not the first Bach family organist, though hwe was certainly the most ingenious. Franz Lehrndorfer will improvise on the immense new instrument at the Cathedral in Munich. And Melanie Ninneman and Helen Jensen perform a seasonal duet. It’s music to raise the spirits, literally - a seasonal selection from four centuries of compositions on resurrection themes, with works by Pachelbel and John Rutter, a fantastic improvisation from the Munich Cathedral, and some of Bach’s most exuberant chorale-preludes. All together, their colors and harmonies will stir your soul - music for This Joyful Eastertide, this week on Pipedreams.

Considering that Mozart wrote virtually nothing for the organ, we certainly had fun finding things of his to play!

…Tournemire: Choral-Improvisation, Victimae Paschli –organist Richard Morris (1988 Rodgers organ/2nd Baptist Church, Houston, Texas)

…Through arrangements, transcriptions and revised attributions we discover that Wolfgang Amadeus really did revere the 'king of instruments', sometimes in unexpected ways.

…A further exploration of known and unknown works which sound better on the pipe organ than their composer ever imagined.