Rie­ger or­gan in A 015

Com­ple­ted in 2025, the or­gan by the Aus­tri­an com­pa­ny Rie­ger Or­gel­bau pro­vi­des the HfMDK with an in­stru­ment that is uni­que in its con­cep­ti­on and sound ae­s­the­tics. De­ve­lo­ped as a sym­pho­nic cham­ber or­gan, it com­bi­nes tech­ni­cal pre­cisi­on, to­nal co­lor and acoustic ba­lan­ce in a small space.

The or­gan has three ma­nu­als and pe­dal with a to­tal of 21 soun­d­ing stops. De­spi­te its com­pact size, it en­ab­les the au­then­tic in­ter­pre­ta­ti­on of a broad re­per­toire - es­pe­ci­al­ly ro­man­tic and mo­dern or­gan mu­sic (in­clu­ding Franck, Wi­dor, Re­ger, Karg-Elert, Hin­de­mith, Mes­sia­en).

A cen­tral fea­ture is the ex­tra­or­di­na­ry dy­na­mic fle­xi­bi­li­ty: the most power­ful voices - Mix­tu­re and Trum­pet - are lo­ca­ted in swell­ab­le works, the vo­lu­me of which can be fi­ne­ly nu­an­ced using woo­den shut­ters con­trol­led by the feet. The com­bi­na­ti­on of high wind pres­su­re, clo­sed stops and ca­re­ful­ly coor­di­na­ted sca­ling crea­tes a sound that is al­ways fle­xi­ble, ne­ver mas­si­ve. In terms of sound and de­sign, the in­stru­ment harks back to the or­gan buil­ding tra­di­ti­on of the 1920s and 1930s - a time in which ro­man­tic rich­ness and poe­try, qua­li­ty craft­s­manship and the de­si­re for trans­pa­ren­cy and over­to­nes were in ex­ci­ting har­mo­ny. This idea was trans­la­ted into the pre­sent day for the HfMDK.

The or­gan was built by Rie­ger Or­gel­bau (Schwarz­ach/Vor­arl­berg) un­der the ar­tis­tic di­rec­tion of Wen­de­lin Eber­le, Rei­ner Schu­henn and Ste­phan Nie­b­ler (voi­cing). It is lo­ca­ted in room A 015 and forms the to­nal cen­ter of or­gan and church mu­sic stu­dies at the uni­ver­si­ty.

The main spon­sors of the new tea­ching or­gan are the Aven­tis Foun­da­ti­on and the Crespo Foun­da­ti­on. In ad­di­ti­on, the con­struc­tion of the new or­gan was kind­ly sup­por­ted by the Dr. Hans Feith and Dr. Eli­sa­beth Feith Foun­da­ti­on and the So­cie­ty of Fri­ends and Spon­sors of the HfMDK Frank­furt (GFF).