Organ World Belvedere
A new organ and two historic instruments for the Music High School Schloss Belvedere
The Musikgymnasium Schloss Belvedere as a centre for highly gifted students of the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar will receive new organs. A few days ago, Dr Brigitte Seebacher, patron of the project, and the Förderkreis für Begabte am Musikgymnasium Schloss Belvedere e.V. signed an agreement to this effect.
The project includes a new organ as well as the acquisition and installation of two related historical instruments. The practice organ, which has been in the concert hall since 2007, will be moved to the school's choir hall.
This project will significantly expand the possibilities for the education of the pupils of the music high school. The instruments will also open up new horizons of experience for the concert audience: from solo recitals to the interplay of two organ musicians to concert performances with the Belvedere Orchestra.
The concept was developed jointly by Martin Sturm, Professor of Organ and Organ Improvisation at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, and the Belvedere headmaster Gerold Herzog, who are "overjoyed".
The completion of the modern new organ building is planned for spring 2025. The pipework will be placed in the gallery of the concert hall, the console can be freely positioned in the hall arena. A total of 21 sounding stops can be assigned to any of the three manuals and the pedal.
As early as the beginning of the 2023/2024 school year, it is planned to re-install the previous hall organ at its new location in Belvedere's Mozart House. The instrument, created in 1968 by the Göttingen company Paul Ott, with its nine stops will continue to be available for organ practice, as well as for chamber music and choir accompaniment.
In spring 2024, the two historic instruments will be placed in the concert hall on the steps to the left and right of the panorama window. The Walcker organ (1877) and the three-manual Kotykiewicz organ harmonium (ca. 1900) come from the private collection of KMD Prof. Dr. h. c. Christoph Bossert (Würzburg).
The organ harmonium has a special connection to Weimar. It resembles an instrument that Franz Liszt donated towards the end of his life to the Weimar "Orchestra, Music and Opera School" for the newly established organist training.
The work on all four instruments will be carried out by the Czech organ-building firm Dlabal & Mettler, based in Bílsko, which has made a name for itself internationally in recent years as a restoration specialist and through various new buildings.
Dr Seebacher signed the donation agreement almost exactly one year to the day after the memorial concert for her husband Hilmar Kopper, who died in November 2021, which the students of the music high school had given in his honour on 7 April 2022. As spokesman of the board of Deutsche Bank AG, Kopper played a significant role in the bank's decision to finance the construction of the new Weimar Music High School in 1995.
The modern building ensemble consisting of a school and boarding school is Deutsche Bank's largest single sponsorship project to date and bears his signature in various details. Until the end of his life, he also remained privately involved with the school and its up to 120 musically gifted children and young people from all over Germany and abroad.
[25 April 2023]