This evening we have brass and organ music from the rather magnificent Melk Abbey in Austria.
I first visited this when I made the journey to the International Horn Symposium in Vienna in 1983. One of the trips took us to Melk and we had the privilege of listening to some great horn playing in a number of different ‘spaces’ within the Abbey.
One thing that stuck in my mind was that I was told that architecturally all the rooms and corridors are built to be narrower at one end than at the other. If you see pictures of the abbey from above you will immediately notice that the overall shape is almost triangular with the point at the rocky promontory overlooking the river.
Coincidentally the line-up of the Canadian Brass in this video is the same as it was when I heard them live in Vienna in 1986.
Canadian Brass and Diane Bish (organ)
Benedetto Marcello : Psalm XIX
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Ave Verum
Robert Schumann : Sketch in D Flat
Charles-Marie Widor : Lord Save Thy People
Robert Schumann : Sketch in C
Johann Sebastian Bach : Art Of Fugue
Georg Friedrich Händel : Hallelujah Chorus