Opening organ TivoliVredenburg

Photo: Foppe Schut for the Volkskrant.

Forty years ago, the Utrecht Music Center Vredenburg started to save for a concert organ. During the Early Music Festival, it sounded for the first time.

There is no pipe to be seen in the 'Grote Zaal' of TivoliVredenburg, when with an organ one would expect a large front of elongated pipes. This new organ however has been integrated into the existing hall by AHH, Peter van Dijk and Van Vulpen organ builders. The envelope of the organ, that OrgelNieuws strikingly described as "discretely outstanding", consists of panels with round openings. TivoliVredenburg is now, as far as known, the only concert hall in the world with a baroque organ, without the baroque looks.

In TivoliVredenburg it was double party that evening: the opening of the Utrecht Early Music Festival was accompanied by the introduction of the new baroque organ in the Grote Zaal. Because of the new organ, the festival took off with the 'Organfest': every day there was a concert in which the organ was in the lead.

Listen to the opening of the organ and the first concert in the broadcast 'Zomeravondconcert' of NL Radio 4 of August 25th.