Guess what, Queen Liliuokalani was at the Bergkirche this morning! Well, actually it was her composition, “The Queen’s Prayer,” that was sung by the Hawaii Masterworks Chorus at the Bergkirche at the offertory in today’s service. I am quite confident that this was the first time Hawaiian music was sung at this church where Joseph Haydn was once the organist.

When I heard that we were going to sing a Haydn mass at the Bergkirche, my first thought was, um, singing Haydn is like bringing coals to Newcastle! I mean, why would they want to hear a choir from Hawaii sing Haydn?

In fact, our performance of the Nicolaimesse went extremely well and the Haydn Orchester Eisenstadt was absolutely superb. The soloists were excellent: Chandra Peters, Naomi Castro, soprano; Sarah Lambert Connolly, Susan Purnell, alto; Douglas Hall, Bowe Souza, tenor; and Scott Fikse, Keane Ishii, bass.

While on the bus en route to the church this morning, someone asked if I was going to play anything other than the Haydn mass, and I said ‘no,’ nobody had asked me to play anything else and I had not practiced anything.

However, at the end of the service, as the choir went downstairs to sing “My Lord, what a morning,” the parish organist asked me if I wanted to play a postlude. I had already changed out of my organ shoes, but decided to pull out the third movement of the Mendelssohn Second Sonata at the last minute, put the music on the rack and away I went! It went extremely well, even though I had not practiced it on this organ.

After the service we were invited to see the unique Stations of the Cross behind the altar, leading to a rooftop walkway with a spectacular view of the valley below. You can also see what beautiful weather we are having; blue skies and cool weather.

We went to a local wine festival to have lunch and on our way back, stopped by a cemetery where famous musicians are buried: Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Strauss, and others.