The Vancouver Centre celebrated International Pipe Organ Day, 22 April 2023, with an organ crawl and recital by Christina Hutten.
About a dozen of us gathered at the New Westminster Christian Reformed Church to see, hear and play the 3 Manual Casavant1967/Koppejan1990 organ. Sipke Pijl spoke about the organ and described that the original two manual Casavant unit organ with Great and Positiv divisions had a third Swell manual and seven ranks added by Adrian Koppejan. The organ was also revoiced to be a warmer tone and a beautiful wooden case was added.
Our second stop was St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Parish in Vancouver with a very sweet two manual tracker organ in the gallery. The organ was built by Canadian organ builder, Leslie Smith, in 2011. A few more members joined us and, after Christopher Dalton, our local organ historian, talked about the organ, we had a chance to listen, play and view the pipe work.
We split up to get some lunch and reconvened at St Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in East Vancouver to hear Christina Hutten play a delightful one hour concert on the two manual organ (1961) built by Hugo Spilker of Victoria. She also played a one manual harpsichord built by Craig Tomlinson and owned by the Vancouver Society for Early Music. After the concert of music by Bach, de la Guerre, Buxtehude, Sweelinck, Brahms, Demessieux, Frescobaldi, Storace, Jeay and Franck, the organist of St Mark’s, Dubravko Pajalic, gave a short demonstration of the organ.
New Westminster Christian Reformed Church
St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic ParishChristina Hutten’s concert at St Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
