700-year-old St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague inaugurates new organ

PRAGUE — Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral had its new organ inaugurated on Monday, giving the 700-year-old building, the largest in the Czech Republic, a proper instrument to accompany religious services and concerts. Prague archbishop Stanislav Pribyl was set to bless the organ at a ceremony as part of a mass, with music played by the Czech Philharmonic and featuring “The Luzany Mass” by Antonín Dvořák and works by Georg Friedrich Handel, Camille Saint-Saens and Joseph Haydn.

“St. Vitus Cathedral has gained a new voice,” Pribyl said in a statement. “A voice that will not speak with words but will still speak to the heart.”

A series of eight concerts to present the new instrument will follow in the days to come. The instrument with four keyboards was build in the workshop of Gerhard Grenzing in El Papiol near the Spanish city of Barcelona. The renowned German organ builder has constructed almost 140 organs and reconstructed more than 90 historical instruments in many countries.

Once completed in Spain, the new organ was disassembled and its parts were gradually transported t