Sand organ and sea pipes

ARTE.TV – ON Demand – Concert

The great organist Jean Guillou (1930-2019), owner of the gallery of the Saint-Eustache church in Paris from 1963 to 2015, had always dreamed of it “Take the organ out of the church and give it a new life”, as he explained to Agence France-Presse in April 2015. He was interested in the barrel organ and whale song, and even worked with a Nô theater actor and the mime Marceau (1923–2007). His dream was to play the organ in the open air, on an instrument that would have allowed him to perform in the woods…

That’s more or less what Iveta Apkalna managed during a concert filmed at dawn under the open sky and by the sea on a Latvian coast and filmed by Agita Cane-Kile Sunrise concert with Iveta Apkalna. Disguised as a character star trek The next generationDressed in a pageboy costume that seems reimagined by Cardin or Courrèges, the Latvian organist sits at the elevated console of an electronic instrument whose sound will cause allergies to fans of the large registers of a Clicquot (the great 18th-century organ builder).^e century, not champagne wine, which is the other branch of the family).

Really sharp, captured by Artes cameras and microphones, the sound of the instrument is naturally amplified for the audience. Playing outdoors is never ideal, at least not in open spaces with no sound reflection; But we also know concert halls in which the installed organs sound so dry that we want to give them something to drink.

Cistercian simplicity

The floor under the instrument’s pedal board is covered with a reflective surface. In such a way that the visual continuity between him and the sluggish sea in the morning, skilfully filmed, looks like an infinity pool whose waterline merges with the horizon. We could be in India, during a musical ceremony with a long ritual, in front of Terry Riley and his electric organ – which he plays while crouching on the floor – or on the tambura with his guru Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996). .

One could also imagine oneself in a swanky and fascinating film by Paolo Sorrentino when the concert opens with the languid music of unsettling Cistercian simplicity by Peteris Vasks, a Latvian composer sometimes heard in the rich soundtracks of Peteris Vasks Italian filmmaker – who also likes the works of the better known Estonian Arvo Pärt.

The effect that mixes these timeless polyphonies next to a sea with bluish reflections under a pale pink sky is impressive. We will hear from Vasks in turn: white landscape (the seasons i, 1980), originally for piano; Then anthem written and dedicated to Iveta Apkalna, who created it in May 2019 on the organ of the Walt Disney Concert Hall – a hall built by Frank Gehry – in Los Angeles. Following is a transcription of the famous Chaconne for solo violin by Bach.

The concert ends (before an encore after: L’Arlesiennevon Bizet) through the piece of music Glory to God alone in the highest by another Latvian composer, Aivars Kalejs, whose solar figures blur against the backdrop of a sun that has now risen above the horizon line.

Are the intense beams that the organist then throws in the face the reason for the many hooks we hear? With this kind of music, and especially on the beach, the smallest grain of sand is deadly.