Xianmei Fang's organ concert

Xianmei Fang is a Chinese-born organist, harpsichordist and pianist, currently studying at the Mozarteum University Salzburg, where she also serves as an assistant to Professor Hannfried Lucke. At the 2026 Night of the Organs, she already demonstrated why she is an artist worth watching. There is a striking contrast in the fact that Xianmei Fang began her journey into the world of organ music in a country where the instrument itself has only truly begun to flourish in recent decades. After 1949, virtually all organs in China were destroyed, and not a single new instrument was built for forty years. The turning point came in 1989, with the installation of the first organ at Beijing Concert Hall. Since then, however, China has embarked on a veritable “organ race”. Today, nearly sixty organs can be found in the country’s concert halls, including the monumental five-manual instrument with 88 stops at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, currently the largest organ in China. It is within this young Chinese organ culture, barely three decades old, that the generation to which Xianmei Fang belongs has come of age. In this concert, she brings this distinctive Eastern relationship with the organ into the sacred space of the church.