Sat 3 - throughout the organ music festival there are some half hour recitals. We went to the Niguliste Church for one of these concerts, performed by an Estonian organist, Anna Humal. She played the most fabulous pieces by Messiaen and César Franck. The organ has a magnificent sound and the church has very good acoustics. The organ is at the back of the church, in an organ loft. The pews can face either the back or the front of the church, by moving the back of the seat. Therefore we could all face the organ, even though we couldn't see the organist until she got up and bowed at the end of the concert. (Before the concert started a young couple sat down in front of us and were talking constantly, which was OK. When the concert started they continued talking, but dropped to a whisper. That was sort of ok in the loud opening moments of the Messiaen, but when the music was softer, it was very annoying. I was thinking of moving to another seat at an appropriate time, but Rob took matters into his own hands, on behalf of the whole audience, and poked them in the back and told them to shut up! You should have seen the guilty looks on their faces! They didn't utter a word for the rest of the concert!)
Later in the evening we returned to the Niguliste Church to hear another Estonian organist, Professor Andres Uibo perform. Andres is the convenor and organiser of the music festival and has studied under a range of organists including Ton Koopman. Andres performs in a lot of countries around the Baltic states, Europe, the Russian Federation and Japan. He is also a composer, and the major work on the program was one his own compositions in 4 movements. During this concert they had set up a video camera in the organ loft and a screen down below, so you could watch him playing the organ (including the pedals. His composition was a very complex work which required a massive amount of changes to the organ stops throughout the piece. It was absolutely fascinating to watch him playing and managing all the changes to the organ stops for each manual. He was frantically busy throughout the whole piece! We felt that parts of his piece showed influence from Arvo Pärt (an Estonian composer). Andres Uibo's piece was the most spectacular work which incorporated a huge range of tone colour and volume. We were riveted throughout.
Andres appears to be quite an unassuming, quiet bloke. Before this concert he was siting with us riff raff, waiting to be let into the church! He chats to people and appears to be very pleasant. Before we left Australia, we had some email communication with him and his staff about the dates of the festival. He told us that we would be honoured guests!
Sun 4 - back we went to the Niguliste Church for another half hour concert. This time, the organist was Denis Kasparovitch, who was once a student of Andres Uibo. The program consisted of works by Bach, Scheidemann (who lived before Bach) Reger and Franck. We enjoyed all the pieces. Again, we didn't see the organist until after the concert, when he bowed. The music was excellent and on this occasion, the audience was very well behaved! Nobody talked!
