Concertos for Organ and Orchestra

The program opens with the Organ Concerto in A minor by Marco Enrico Bossi, one of the leading Italian organists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, who played a major role in bringing the organ back to the concert stage. The evening concludes with a concerto by Hans-André Stamm, a contemporary German organist and composer, presented in a version for strings, woodwinds, and percussion. Between these two works comes Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No. 10 in B minor, composed when the composer was only fifteen years old.

A unique detail of this concert lies in the very mechanics of the performance. The organ in the hall is positioned so that the organist sits with her back to the orchestra and conductor, seeing them only through a mirror placed in front of her. The entire musical exchange between Iryna Kharechko and Antonii Kedrovskyi is built through this reflection: the conductor’s gesture reaches the soloist as a mirrored image, and she responds to it, in a sense, through glass. In an organ concerto with orchestra, where precise coordination is essential, this mirror becomes an invisible yet crucial participant in the evening—a delicate thread holding together two different sonic worlds.