Yesterday when we were at the Temple du Lutry, I saw this sign posted on the side of the organ:

I guess it’s the same everywhere—people talk while the organist is playing and it is SO distracting! I don’t know why it is the sound of the organ that encourages people to engage in conversation while the organist may be trying to play the prelude or the postlude. Worse yet, is having people trying to carry on a conversation with YOU while you are playing!

It’s Sunday morning in Lausanne and we have the rare morning off, so I’d like to take this opportunity to post some of the pictures that I take but somehow never get seen. On a typical trip, I’ll probably take 800-1200 pictures, and only a handful make it to this blog.

While I’m on the road, I try to write blog posts every night—mostly because then the day’s activities are still fresh in my mind. I try to keep the focus of this blog on music, but I can’t overlook the fact that what is so beautiful in Switzerland are the colorful flowers.

Here are some other things which have caught my eye:

In the afternoon, we visited two more churches in Lausanne before we move on to Fribourg tomorrow morning. Our first stop was at the Eglise réformé St Paul, which changed from being Catholic to Protestant, and with it came a complete remodeling of the interior, with a new organ by Felsberg Orgelbau AG, contemporary stained glass and a unique slatted wooden ceiling.

The organ was styled after Arp Schnitger and we were advised to play North German repertoire so I played “Christ lag in Todesbanden” by Georg Böhm, which worked well. This is a piece that I used to play during communion every Easter Vigil at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu.

The next church was Eglise St François where the church organist first demonstrated an Italian-style organ in the chancel. The church had obtained it from a local high school who had three small organs of this size. I am just amazed that a high school would have such an unusual instrument! It had ten stops, with a split keyboard, and although it was built only in 1990, it surely sounded and looked like an antique organ.

We then heard the large 5-manual Kuhn organ in the rear gallery where the local organist played a short program. One of the pieces was Couperin’s “Tierce en taille” from his Mass for the Parishes, a piece near and dear to my husband and me. In fact, I played it during the communion at our wedding.

It just so happened that I was talking to Charlotte Woods, one of the tour participants, on our way into the church, and she asked me what my husband died of, and I told her pancreatic cancer, the same as Aretha Franklin who died recently. So Carl was definitely on my mind when we were listening to this piece, beautifully played. In fact, before I heard the organist play it, I was considering playing it myself since French Classic music sounds so well on it. But because he already played it, I chose to play the “Adagio” from Mendelssohn’s  Sonata No. 1 in F minor, and I did get some compliments on it—it sounded so lovely on this instrument.

The local organist also played a transcription of “Erbarme dich” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which sounded absolutely gorgeous on this organ. It was so colorfully registered and elegantly performed, so when I complimented him on his playing, he said it was his own transcription.

It seems that here in Switzerland, we have just heard and played one beautiful organ after another!

Here are pictures I took of the ceiling and front of the church. I think this is a Protestant church, because of the lack of statues and ephemera, but I’m surprised to hear a Protestant church with the name Saint François.

On to Fribourg!