View from the Green Room: Packed weekend at Waterford's Organ Festival
A solo performance on organ featured Victor Baena from Spain and was just perfect for Christ Church Cathedral.
Christ Church’s International Organ Festival included an incredibly diverse programme that opened on Thursday, September 17, and ran until Sunday, September 20.
The opening concert played to a large audience and featured Mezzo-Soprano Róisín O’Grady, the Festival orchestra with leader David O’Dohery and choir conducted by Simon Harden. The programme of baroque classics from Telemann, Bach and Handel was anchored by Simon on the organ with Shen Wenn Teo as continuo.
Friday morning was dedicated to children with three performances of Peter and the Wolf with narration by Dean Bruce Hayes. Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev composed this piece that was based on the Russian folk tale “Peter and the Wolf”. It was originally written for an orchestra to introduce young children to individual instruments with all the different character roles in the story assigned to different instruments. A very clever organ arrangement proved a big hit with the young audiences.
The pipe organ with its large library of sounds, is just right to imitate the individual instruments. The narration of the story of Peter and the Wolf accompanied by the organ attracted three good audiences on Friday morning.
Friday night’s concert ‘Litanies from the past’ featured an eclectic mix of sacred music across four centuries. This solo performance on organ featured Victor Baena from Spain and was just perfect for Christ Church Cathedral.
Saturday night was movie night. The silent movie ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ (La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc) is a 1928 French silent historical film based on the actual record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starred Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan. It is widely regarded as a landmark of cinema. Dreyer's direction and Falconetti's performance sets the picture apart as one of the finest in cinema history. The film summarizes the time that Joan of Arc was a captive of England and depicts her trial and execution.
Parisian organist David Cassan’s (Paris) improvisations on Christ Church’s 209-year-old historic Elliot-Jones pipe organ (built in 1817 by Thomas Elliot) adds to the melodrama of the piece and made for a very interesting evening.
The festival signed off with a Sunday afternoon ‘Trumpet and Organ Recital’ that featured French duo Aleksandr Nisse at the organ and with Benjamin Belloir on trumpet. The programme featured the world premiere of a piece written by Aleksandr Nisse inspired by the geological formation of the Copper Coast in County Waterford.
There’s a lot going on here and Aleksandr Nisse explains the nature of the composition. "The landscape preserves evidence of volcanic activity, ancient oceans, and tectonic movements spanning hundreds of millions of years. Rather than depicting the landscape itself, the work seeks to translate these immense geological processes into sound, compressing vast stretches of geological time into a musical experience.
"The central idea of the composition is gradual transformation. Harmonic, rhythmic, spatial, and timbral processes unfold at different rates, creating a musical landscape in constant evolution. The work explores the tension between stability and imperceptible change, mirroring the slow accumulation of geological forces that ultimately shaped the Copper Coast."
The piece was especially commissioned for the festival and made for a splendid finale to the weekend’s events.
Congratulations to Simon Harden and his team in leading the festival.
