The II International Organ Festival is being held at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, which for five days will become a centre of organ music in St Petersburg. According to French organist Thierry Escaich, who has already performed on several occasions at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre and who next year will be the festival’s director, “the festival promises to be interesting and memorable: during the festival there will be performances of undoubted great classical composers of the past – Bach, Mendelssohn and Franck, organist-composers who began their careers by playing the organ and only later composed timeless orchestral and vocal masterpieces; it will also be possible to hear the ‘organ-orchestra’ – arrangements for organ of symphony music by Ravel, Strauss and Messiaen; and there will be performances of contemporary organ music at the festival – works by classical composers of our own time including Mikael Tariverdiev and Rolande Falcinelli as well as jazz compositions.”
One interesting festival event will come with Thierry Escaich’s improvisation performance to a silent film. This project will be a memoir of the magnificent tradition of organ performances in the cinema at the dawn of filmmaking, when films were shown to the accompaniment of such great composers as Saint-Saëns and Olivier Messiaen.
This year the International Organ Festival is dedicated to the memory of the festival’s founder and first Artistic Director Oleg Kinyaev, a Russian organist who held the post of Principal Organist and Organ Master of the Mariinsky Theatre and who made a tremendous contribution to the development of organ music in St Petersburg.
The organ at the Concert Hall, crafted by the Strasbourg company Daniel Kern, is one of the first organs to be built in Russia in the last century, constructed in the manner of the French symphony organ with rich timbres, deep nuancing and expansive registers.
24 October. Gunther Rost, a prize-winner at more than ten organ competitions, recipient of the Bavarian State Prize “For Achievements in Art” and professor of the organ and improvisation class at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz (Austria), will be performing a classical programme of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn and Louis Vierne.
25 October. The programme of the recital by Lada Labzina, Honoured Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, senior lecturer at the faculty of organ and harpsichord studies at the Kazan State Zhiganov Conservatoire and Art Director of the State Bolshoi Saidashev Concert Hall in Kazan, will feature Lada Labzina’s own original transcriptions of the first movement of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Schéhérazade, a prelude by Dave Brubeck and jazz works for organ by Volker Bräutigam, Krzysztof Sadowski and Dežē Antalfi-Žiross as well as works by Franz Liszt, Johann Sebastian Bach, César Franck and Mikael Tariverdiev.
26 October. Maxime Patel, an organist who frequently performs recitals in Europe and beyond and the only performer in the world of Jeanne Demessieux’ incredibly complex Organ Études a recording of which critics have hailed as a historic event, will be performing works by this French virtuoso organ music composer. The programme also includes works by French, Italian and German composers from the baroque to the 20th century such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, Franz Liszt, Marcel Dupré, Rolande Falcinelli and Pierre Labric.
28 October. David Briggs, the guest organist at St James’ Cathedral in Toronto, professor at Great Britain’s Royal Academy of Music and the first Briton to receive the Charles Tournemire Prize at the International Improvisation Competition in St Albans in Great Britain, will be presenting the audience with traditional organ music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen in addition to his own transcription for organ of Richard Strauss’ symphonic poem Tod und Verklärung.
30 October. The festival closes with a concert by Thierry Escaich, a renowned composer (he has written over one hundred works), a virtuoso organ improviser, teacher and recipient of numerous music prizes, who will amaze the audience with his masterful improvisation for a screening of the 1925 silent film The Phantom of the Opera.
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