This Friday, Cincinnatians will have a chance to hear a rare concert on a spectacular pipe organ that is a recent addition to Centennial Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral, downtown.

Italian organist and harpsichordist Giulio Francesco Togni performs a free recital on the C. B. Fisk Opus 148 organ in Centennial Chapel, 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 1. His program will be 17th-century music of Italian composers Pasquini, Frescobaldi, Rossi, Storace, and Corelli.

Born in 1998, Togni is something of an organ prodigy. At the age of 16, he became the organist at the Church of San Giuseppe in Brescia, where he plays the historic organ of 1581 by Graziado Antegnati — the “Stradivarius in organ building,” says Harold Byers.

Byers (whose day job is as a violinist in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra) has been involved for the last decade in acquiring musical instruments for Christ Church Cathedral. They include the C.B. Fisk Op. 148 Chapel organ, the 1983 William Dowd harpischord, the Juget-Sinclair continuo organ, Op. 40, and the Richards & Fowks Op. 24 organ for the Nave.

Byers met the organist during a research trip in 2014 to Northern Italy.

The C.B. Fisk organ, Byers says, is “an instrument unlike any other pipe organ in North America, one which is certain to have a large impact on music in North America and beyond. In fact already it has made international impact.”

Last August, Byers’ article about the organ was the cover story of The Diapason magazine. An article on the C.B. Fisk Op. 148 is being published in an upcoming issue of the British publication, Choir and Organ.

Thanks to an anonymous donation, Christ Church Cathedral commissioned one of the world’s most respected builders, C. B. Fisk, Inc., to design, build, and install a new organ for Centennial Chapel as part of the chapel renovation project. The renovated space was rededicated on Sunday, May 20, 2018.

The 2-manual, 22-stop mechanical-action instrument is inspired by historic Italian organ-building principles.

Acoustician Dana Kirkegaard visited the neo-Gothic chapel in 2014 and, inspired by a concert of Bach that he heard there, wrote that he received a vision for what the chapel project might become — “an angel whispering over my right shoulder.”

Said Byers: “It was the beginning of the idea of what the chapel wanted, the Italian sound, rich and warm, a gentle vocal quality produced by low wind pressure. These musical qualities are the same as those we admire in the great string instruments of
Amati and Stradivarius.”

The concert is free and open to the public. For information visit cincinnaticathedral.com.