Organ music is returning to Lebanon thanks to the Lebanese Pipe Organ Week (SOL Festival), a co-production of the Terra Sancta Organ Festival and the Notre Dame University (NDU) School of Music. The event, now in its seventh year, is the only festival dedicated to organ music in Lebanon. This year, concerts were held from April 26 to May 1 in different cities across Lebanon. The festival aims to make known and promote an important musical repertoire, which in the Arab countries risks not being known. Br RICCARDO Deputy Director SOL Festival "This is one of the purposes of our festival, here in Lebanon as well as throughout the Holy Land: to make people discover the repertoire of pipe organ music. Otherwise in these countries they would not have it, because organs are almost exclusively in churches and in order to listen to them one would have to attend liturgies. Instead, our Festival gives everyone the opportunity to listen to the repertoire of classical pipe organ music." The inaugural concert on April 26 was held in Beirut's National Evangelical Church, featuring Austrian organist Peter Peinstingl. Featured performers included German organists Klaus Schulten and Hans-Bernhard Ruß and Italian Silvio Celeghin. The latter also played in the great concert on Saturday 30th in St. Joseph's Church in Beirut, with the participation of the soprano Marie-Josée Matar, the Notre Dame University Choir and the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Fadi Khalil. Giuseppe Verdi's "Four Sacred Pieces" will also be on the program. The final concert was reserved for the best students of Notre Dame University's organ class, who for the first time performed a repertoire for organ and orchestra, with their maestro Cosimo Prontera. The organization of the concerts - all with free admission - was made possible thanks to the contribution of private and institutional sponsors, such as the Italian Institute of Culture in Beirut (which supported three concerts) and the Austrian and German embassies in Lebanon. Br RICCARDO Deputy Director SOL Festival "Since this festival, there has been a renaissance of organ music in Lebanon. This festival has also been an incentive: many churches in order to participate in the festival, and not only, have restored their organs, others have bought new ones." A heritage that could remain confined to churches thus becomes a public contribution of Christians to the culture of Lebanon and the world. Read More