Music flowed from his fingers and toes as he bent over the keyboard absorbed in bringing life from the pipes and bellows of the organ. I sat in the balcony of the Clock Church with my neighbor, Zélia, letting the sounds of the pipe organ take me back in time...my dad's excitement at playing one, watching him delightedly push stops in and out until he found the perfect sound, driving miles to attend a concert. Then I remembered my Mom and I on a nostalgia trip visiting a church close to where she'd attended Bible School in Chicago so many years before and discovering this huge pipe organ there. And when the pastor's wife played a song just for us, the vibrations, the immense structure of those pipes and the power in them was thrilling.
But this night I am listening to Matthias Eisenberg from Germany play on a little pipe organ in my little town in a little church on a Friday night and I'm so thankful.
After the concert I asked the organist, who could speak English, how many pipe organs existed in Germany. He paused and thought a minute, then said, about 10,000. His friend who was accompanying him, added, "A new pipe organ costs about 300,000 euros."
I guess I won't be buying a pipe organ any time soon.
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