Madeira Organ Festival 2014

Organ Festival in the cultural offer

The fifth edition of the Madeira Organ Festival will take place from October 17th to 26th. Being a festival of assured credits regarding the quality of its programming, this is another event of the annual calendar that enriches the autumn cultural offer to Madeirans and, especially, to the sector of cultural tourism and all visitors who, on this date, flock to Madeira.

The Organ Festival was born five years ago within the scope of the "Festivais Culturais da Madeira" project, and is, in a way, the end of a long process of recovering the organ heritage of this Autonomous Region, a precious historical legacy of more than twenty instruments from the Iberian, Italian and English organ schools, of which relevant testimonies still exist in Madeira's churches. Over the years, and after the work of inventorying and organological description, the restoration of several of these instruments was methodically carried out, with the consequent recording and publishing of CDs with different repertoires adjusted to each of the organs, according to a strategy that aimed at the knowledge and dissemination of these instruments. This goal of heritage safeguarding would gain increased visibility with the publication of the book Organ of the Churches of Madeira.

Madeira. Finally, connecting the two extremes of an integrated process that goes from the survey and inventory to the knowledge and enjoyment of this unique heritage, we have the creation and realization of a great Organ Festival, which seeks to show in harmony the various faces of Beauty, historically expressed in the art of space (architecture) and the art of time (music), here again reconnected in the aesthetic enjoyment that only culture can provide.

Throughout this journey of almost two decades, which goes from the rehabilitation of the old instruments to the construction of the great organ created from scratch for the Colégio church and the consequent creation of the Festival, the work of the master organ-builder Dinarte Machado in the restoration and the contribution of the organist João Vaz in the artistic direction of the festival deserve special mention, Both have a deep knowledge of the diversity and richness of our organ heritage and have always accompanied, with great enthusiasm and professional sensitivity, the entire process that allows us to present today an Organ Festival already in its fifth edition, with repertoires that will give us the opportunity to hear the best of the great masters of European music.

Qualifying and diversifying the quality cultural offer is the main goal of the "Madeira Cultural Festivals" project, developed by the Regional Secretary of Culture, Tourism and Transports, and in this desideratum, the Organ Festival has an important role, by the attractiveness and exchanges that it raises and by the public that it has already conquered, promoting the best of our patrimonial and artistic identity in the wider market of cultural tourism.

João Henrique Silva
Regional Director of Cultural Affairs

V Organ Festival of Madeira

The Madeira Organ Festival returns once again to the churches of the Region. Crowning an intense and consequent activity of restoration, promotion and enhancement of the organ heritage of Madeira, carried out for over a decade by the Regional Government of Madeira, this festival has already established itself as one of the most significant events of its kind.

Since its first edition, one of FOM's goals has been to present programs that allow the multiple potentialities of Madeira's instruments to be explored. The Portuguese organs from the 18th century, the organs imported from England in the 19th century and the recent Colégio Church organ have, over the last four years, been vehicles of expression of varied repertoires, by the hands of many national and foreign organists.

In this edition, the Colégio Church will host two solo recitals by Pieter van Dijk and Joris Verdin, dedicated respectively to Johann Sebastian Bach and to Franco-Belgian music. The Iberian and Italian repertoire from the 16th to 18th centuries will be presented in the Church of Machico by the young organist Daniela Moreira. The duo formed by soprano Rosana Orsini and organist Marco Aurelio Brescia explores the fusion between organ and song in the Churches of São Pedro (Funchal) and Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe (Porto da Cruz), with a late 18th century Peninsular repertoire, while the organ of the Church of São Martinho, played by João Santos, sounds alongside the Classical Orchestra of Madeira conducted by Norberto Gomes. The unprecedented combination of the organ and literary recitation marks the program proposed by João Paulo Janeiro and Paula Erra in the Church of the Convento do Bom Jesus. The V Madeira Organ Festival concludes with another novelty: the presence of the harmonium. Extremely popular during the second half of the 19th century, this instrument fell into total disuse during the 20th century and was only recently rehabilitated. Joris Verdin is one of the world's harmonium specialists, and brings us a solo program and with singing (with the participation of Maria Ferreira) that will reveal the potentialities of this instrument that is so unknown today.

Parallel to these events, a conference by Rui Vieira Nery and a visit to two of the most significant organs in Funchal will provide a different perspective of organ music and the organistic heritage of the Autonomous Region of Madeira.

João Vaz
Artistic Director