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I have been fascinated by the organ since my childhood, and therefore started to accompany liturgical services for children in my home parish already before I received my first organ lessons at the age of eleven. Later I sucessfully took studies to become a B-church musician (our grading system) and finally started my organ studies at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts with Professor Peter Planyavsky in 1995.
Not only prompted by my studies but also out of personal interest I am
curious about working on and playing a higly varied repertoire.
That organ music composed by Austrians is taking a major role in the choice
of this repertoire can be demonstrated, for instance, by the
program of a concert I
gave in March 2000 in the course of the series
Wiener Orgelkonzerte (organized by Kunstverein Wien) in the parish church of
Breitensee.
The focus of this concert lay - due to the available instrument - on music
of the Romantic Era. And my part on a joint concert organized by the
Vienna University of Music and
Performing Arts on the occasion of the festivities of the 125-year celebrations
of the Vienna music publishing house
Doblinger was again a
piece by a native Austrian - I played the choral fantasy "Nun komm der Heiden
Heiland" by Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843 - 1900). During my studies in Gothenburg I learned to
appreciate Swedish organ music, a kind of repertoire that is quite rarely played
in my home country.
My interest in early organ music got new impulses through an
organ study tour to Italy under the direction of
Prof. DDr. Rupert Gottfried Frieberger in June 2002.
On this tour I had a chance to see and play historical organs in
Gemona, Spilimbergo, Udine (in the cathedral and in San Giorgio),
Valvasone
and Venzone and thus to experience the sound and the world of Italian
organ music of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in a very
direct way.
Participation in a seminar held by
Guy Bovet at the Vienna University
for Music allowed me further insights into the organ music of the
sixteenth to eighteenth centuries of the Iberian Peninsula.
In Gothenburg I had for a period of three months the chance to work with the
organ built in the style of the North German Baroque, which was set up in Örgryte Nya
Kyrka, and study some repertoire appropriate for this instrument as well.
During several journeys through Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen and Thuringia I had a chance also to
play organs built by Zacharias Hildebrandt and Gottfried Silbermann.
Currently I am again slightly more northerly based and get to know many organs within the Netherlands that are so rich in historic instruments, and there mainly in Amsterdam and its surroundings, where I am currently living and studying.
Furthermore, I am interested in chamber music works for violin and organ. Together with my brother Gottfried I performed a number of concerts with original compositions for violin and organ, and we also took chamber music courses at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and at the School of Music and Music Education, Gothenburg University.
Apart from that my work as an organist in the field of church music is very important to me.
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© Manfred Novak, 2007