You may remember that it was last year when I visited Eisenstadt, where composer Josef Haydn lived and is now buried in the Bergkirche, the “Hill” church. Go back and read my post, “Mission to Eisenstadt,” to refresh your memory. It was here that Haydn played the organ and premiered several of his mass settings.

Today we had a rehearsal for tomorrow’s Sunday mass, with the Hawaii Masterworks Chorus singing Haydn’s Nicolaimesse” for the Ordinary. The instrumentalists were called the Haydn Orchester Eisenstadt, perfectly prepared to play this wonderful, joyful work.

I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to perform this work in the fantastic, reverberant acoustics of this church! When director Tim Carney signaled a cutoff after the first movement, the sound of the choir and orchestra took almost 5 full seconds (it is estimated) to die away, and everyone laughed! (The figure of 4-1/2 to 5 seconds of reverberation is detailed in the Wikipedia article). We just can’t experience this type of acoustics in any church building in Honolulu.

The choir sounds absolutely fantastic here!

I also was worried somewhat about what kind of organ I would be playing—According to Wikipedia,

The church still possesses its original organ, built in the 18th century by the Viennese maker Gottfried Malleck; the instrument has been restored to its original state, as it was when it was played by Haydn and Beethoven at the premieres of famous works. The original console, however, is no longer used but resides now in the nearby Haydn Museum.

I was confused by the name of Rieger printed on the console—which is a contemporary Austrian organbuilder. Apparently only the console is by Rieger; the pipework is original.

My seat at the organ console is absolutely the best for seeing Tim—he’s standing right in front of me! Viewing him against the backdrop of the angels in the ceiling is a little surreal—but it just gives me a little shiver knowing that Haydn sat in this very church playing the organ and now his remains are downstairs in the side chapel. Chicken skin, for sure!

A number of people asked me if I enjoyed playing the instrument. Yes, but—I really didn’t spend enough time with the instrument to get to know it. It’s like meeting someone for the first time and only getting to talk to them for five seconds. I wish I could have explored more of its sounds and colors. As it is, I didn’t even get to read 20% of the names on the stop tabs!

In the evening half of us went to the Opera House to see Falstaff, and the rest of us (including me), went to Karlskirche to hear a performance of the Mozart Requiem. I’m afraid I could barely stay awake, but maybe it wasn’t completely my lack of sleep—essentially I have not slept in three days!

They sang Ave Verum corpus as an encore too fast, and the harmonies were smushed together in the reverberant acoustics. The building was stunning, though, and had a beautiful organ case in the back.