Venues
Bach & now! – The Agathenburg Bach Festival 2025, an event dedicated entirely to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, will take place at three remarkable venues that are known both for their acoustic qualities and their historical significance: Agathenburg Castle, St Wilhadi and St Cosmae et Damiani.
Schloss Agathenburg
The castle with its imposing baroque garden, which invites you to stroll and linger, is just a stone’s throw away from Stade, the Hanseatic city with two famous baroque organs.
The magnificent baroque concert hall and the rustic horse stable are used for the concerts – two concert halls with very different auras, offering the exciting opportunity to experience diametrically opposed sound spaces in one venue.
Hanseatic City of Stade
The tranquil town of Stade is characterised by its location on the Elbe and Schwinge rivers. Stade owes its eventful history to both.
The Schwinge, which flows through the middle of the old town, also exudes maritime charm; the town harbour is located directly in the old town and is now an attractive marina.
However, the town’s two brick churches in particular, the imposing Gothic hall church of St Wilhadi and Stade’s landmark, the baroque town church of St Cosmae et Damiani, attract numerous music lovers from all over the world to Stade every year with their important historic baroque organs.
St. Cosmae et Damiani
This Stade landmark is nestled between the town hall and the half-timbered buildings of Stade town centre. The church’s centrepiece is the famous baroque organ, which organ builder Berendt Huss began building in 1668 and which was completed by his nephew Arp Schnitger in 1675. Schnitger thus established his reputation as one of the best organ builders in Germany.
Noch heute gilt die Orgel als eines der bedeutendsten Orgelbauwerke aus der Barockzeit. Even today, the organ is considered one of the most important organ work building from the Baroque period. It was sensitively restored to its original condition in 1975 by the organ builder Jürgen Ahrend.
This restoration is recognised worldwide as one of the most pioneering measures of its kind.
Church of St Wilhadi
The fact that this massive brick building with its defiant tower is equipped with an organ of cultural and historical significance may come as a surprise at first, but St Wilhadi’s has inspired a number of organ builders in its long history. Already equipped with an organ in the 14th century, which fell victim to the flames in the great town fire of 1659, master organ builder Huss was also commissioned to build a new organ here, which was completed after his death by his nephew and pupil Arp Schnitger.
A lightning strike destroys the church tower in 1724 and with it this organ.
Finally, in 1730, the master organ builder Erasmus Bielfeldt, who had trained under Schnitger’s pupil Matthias Dropa, was commissioned to build a new organ for St Wilhadi, which was inaugurated in 1736 after five years of construction.
An extensive restoration carried out in 1990 by the organ builder Jürgen Ahrend has now restored the organ to its historical sound. . It is considered one of the most important examples of baroque organ building.
The new sound spaces significantly enrich the historical organ landscape with music from the 19th to 21st centuries that can now be performed. The romantic French tone colours are considered unique in the region.