A. Bruckner, Ave Maria at Parish Church Pinkafeld

A demanding alto aria and a new organ

The aria "Ave Maria", WAB 7, was composed by Anton Bruckner in February 1882 and requires a singer with a tessitura of two octaves. The Viennese-born contralto Cornelia Sonnleithner was to give the aria a wonderful sound in the Pinkafeld parish church together with the organist Peter Tiefengraber.

The organ of the Pinkafeld church was renovated in 2022 in a new organ building by Dirk Eule (Hermann Eule Orgelbau Bautzen). It comprises 3 manuals and 31 registers, which make use of 1,789 sounding and 13 silent pipes.

Recording

The recording took place on December 11, 2024. Due to the very cold temperatures the organ was sitting below the 440 Hz intoned for 15° C. The last notes of the aria, especially the low f in "Amen", emphasize the full and velvety sound of Cornelias low register.
The organ balcony, where the singer stood next to the organ console, is a good eight meters high. Since there was no way to hang the microphones from the ceiling of the baroque church, we had to place the main system (Schoeps MK2H) with a particularly high stand. Nevertheless, we managed to achieve a well-sounding position with a pleasant balance between direct and diffuse sound. The main organ was also miked from the front, at middle height of the large facade pipes. For a natural and convincing spatial representation, especially for the following 3D audio Dolby Atmos mix, various other microphones were distributed at selected locations in the room.

Dolby Atmos

The side microphones and the four supports of the church space (surround and top surround) were placed to reproduce the large and melodious overall sound of the church in a natural way. The organ's tones in particular benefit greatly from the microphones in the Dolby Atmos mix, but also in the stereo mix, where the surround microphones were also used.