Organ Concert: "The Organ Dances"

Friday 20 November at 16.00 – The Organ Dances It attracted great attention among organ enthusiasts when organist Lise-Lotte Kristensen released a very different CD in 1996 entitled "The Organ Dances", showing the many facets of the organ. Lise-Lotte has a great fondness for unusual organ music. Music that has gone into the "Book of Oblivion" because it did not fit the prevailing notion of what the age regarded as proper organ and church music. In recent decades much has changed, and when the renowned Professor David Sanger of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge recorded all the dancing and humorous organ works of the Frenchman Lefébure-Wély, the "organ pipe" took on a different sound. It is a fact, however, that concert audiences took to the easily digestible, mood-lifting music, and so there is now a good opportunity to have an unusual concert experience that is sure to bring smiles to most. Lise-Lotte is now employed at Skagen Kirke, but in recent decades has been around churches such as Sct. Catharinæ kirke in Hjørring, Sct. Nicolai kirke in Aabenraa and finally Løgumkloster kirke In "Organistbladet" the CD was torn to pieces, but it sold well, and concert audiences were enthusiastic about the dancing choice of programme with titles such as Daquin's "Kuck kuck", Bourgeois's "Serenade" and last but not least Lefébure-Wély's "Sortie" with its barrel-organ character. "Serenade" was played as a postlude at one of DR's radio high masses. This prompted a stream of enquiries to both Lise-Lotte and DR. Most of them, fortunately, were positive. It was a fact, however, that this kind of dancing music was not everyday fare in that context. At the concert Lise-Lotte plays excerpts from her famous CD and also later releases in the same genre.