While Stanford's 'Big Game' is away this year, a daylong free public event on Saturday will introduce the University of California-Berkeley Music Department's new Noack organ in Hertz Hall. Beginning at 1:30 p.m., there will be lectures, roundtable discussions, demonstrations, and an inaugural recital by Michel Bouvard, followed by a reception.
University organist Davitt Moroney will talk about the reasons for replacing the Holtkamp organ with the new instrument, and organ builders Fritz Noack and Didier Grassin introduce the organ and explain its component parts.
The Noack concert organ, located above the stage in Hertz Hall, has three manuals and pedals, with 35 speaking stops. It is a tracker-action instrument, meaning that there is a strictly mechanical connection between the keyboards (and pedalboard) and the mechanism that allows air to enter individual pipes.
In preparation for the arrival of this complex piece of mechanical engineering, the walls around it in Hertz Hall have been redecorated in Dutch metal, expected to help the acoustics.
The Bouvard recital includes works by Scheidemann (1595–1663), Van Noordt (1620-1675), Buxtehude (1637-1707), Boehm (1661-1733), Du Mont (1610-1684), Marchand (1669-1732), and J.S. Bach.