opus 502 by Peter Ewers

***Attention: Headphones are higly recommended for this recording because of the subfrequent power and explosive sound of this organ! Take care of your ears!***

Live-recording from a benefit performance 2007 with Rob Fordeyn, dance and Peter Ewers, organ at the opus 502, a famous Klais-Organ in Aachen (Germany) from 1913.

Truly contemporary work with improvisation asks for the involvement with dancing. Nowhere work has been as fertile as at this point. Dancing has got similar models resp. concepts of space, a sound, a movement, the currentness of approaching the dealing with all these parameters and conditions with a (de-)construction of density, tension etc. Thus it is highly compatible for your improvisation and to me it is a true personal gain.
When working with representatives of Modern Dance, the 'German' (?) free dance and also the Contemporary Dance from the school of William Forsythe we normally agreed on some reference points, where we arranged to meet in space, as it were, which often is not easy. Professional dancers possess a really astonishing gift, namely an apparently fathomless memory for movement within space. I've seen performances in which a dan-cer could memorize nearly one hundred 'satel-lites' and my poor plot for the concert with 10 - 15 satellites looked rather piddling compared to it.

The organ also speaks when it is not playing – you don't believe it?

Digitally remastered from the original mono tapes. This is a challenge! Every live (!) improvisation on a record eats this spirit of moment.
After this concert had been announced in the classic branch of wdr3 (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) as a tip for their "Kulturpartner" the overwhelming interest of the audience became a strong influence for dance and music. Imagine 400 people standing in the nave. A barfoot young man comes, dropping handwritten papers to the floor, the magnificient opus 502 from Klais is roaring in symphonic colours - some visitors suddenly felt themselves becoming part of this movements, building lanes for the dancer as they later told. A celebration of man's freedom!

Everything passes away. Even the organ. In 1963 the famous opus 502 from Klais came to this church Sankt Nikolaus in Aachen from the Kornelimünster.

Only two years after the performance in New Years Eve 2010 the organ got luckily minor loss by fire evoked by a single pyrotechnical rocket which flew to an opened window in the high nave and burned the high altar with paintings of a pupil of Rubens (which had been formerly so well conserved during the French Revolution, a short visit in the Louvre, Paris and hidden during II. World War).

Meanwhile the organ was transferred from Sankt Nikolaus to Sankt Foillan, Aachen.

Peter Ewers, born 1963, develops an own style of improvisation autodidactically, works as an organist at Paderborn cathedral for five years (with up to 480 services a years). 1996 first CD of improvisations, 1997 on the Cavaillé-Coll-organ of the Madeleine, Paris (critic's prize Coup de coeur), 2000 „Les planètes“ Notre-Dame de Laeken, Brussels (four of five tuning forks in „Diapason“).

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