It’s not very often, at my age, that I get asked to go dancing, most especially when it’s Bavarian folk dancing! Concert work took me to the town of Ottobeuren, not too far from the Alps, to play on a couple magnificent instruments in an enormous baroque basilica. The Riepp organ (1766) is justly world-famous for its size and beauty. But it was no walk in the park to play on it. The pedal board is considerably different from standard, the manual keys are extremely small, and the compass of the keyboards very limiting for organ music of the late 18th century. I had to re-write major portions of a C.P.E. Bach sonata and decided to completely avoid a Mozart piece I had scheduled, realizing that it wouldn’t work on that organ.
In the back of the church is the mammoth Klais organ from 2002 (originally a Steinmayer organ of 1957) where I played Mendelssohn Sonata IV and Franck Pièce Héroïque. That was far more thrilling than I had anticipated. And in the massive basilica, the superb acoustics brought the music alive in a new way for me. That also required slower tempi than I was used to. We Americans, used to dry rooms and organs with electro-pneumatic keyboard action, generally play music faster than it can be played in Europe. Does this make the music unintelligible in the United States, speed at the cost of musicality? The affect switches from musical depth (European organs and acoustics) to impressive performers (American organs and acoustics).
So, our hosts (the Basilica Music Director and his wife) live an 11-minute walk from the Basilica. After the concert on Saturday afternoon, we were invited to attend a folk music and dancing session. This went from 8:00 p.m. until midnight and included a quintet of musicians (bass player, baritone horn, harp, hammer dulcimer, and accordian) and about 30 local people dressed in Bavarian costume (except for us). The music was mostly polkas and waltzes, but each piece had a particular step which virtually all the local folk knew. This was the epitome of friendly! We all danced with many different people, whether we knew them or not. Beer and frankfurters were in abundance. It felt like I was living a Garrison Keillor story. I doubt I will ever forget the experience.