My concert at the Lappee church

Introduction for the program of my concert at the Lappee church, Lappeenranta the 16th March, 2025

My home town Lappeenranta has got the new interesting organ inspired by the French romantic organ style. The instrument was inaugurated in autumn 2024 and is built by the Veikko Virtasen urkurakentamo. The most important organ builder in France in an era of romanticism was Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. He was very productive organ builder who built organs not just in France but also in other European countries, for example in Great Britain and Russia but also in United States and in South America. The most famous Cavaillé-Coll instruments are to be found in Paris, Rouen, Toulouse and Lyon but quite many of them have been changed or supplemented as the new registers have been installed later in these organs by other organ builders.

There are some similar, French romantic copy organs in Finland as this organ at the Lappee church. These are at least the organs at the Kallio church in Helsinki and at the central Pori church. To perform at the traditional French romantic organ is very special as it has just its own way of performance practice. 

The music by César Franck (1822-1890) is widely considered the most essential French organ music composer. He was organist at the St Clotilde church in Paris where the organ at his disposal was giving straightly registrations (stops and a combination of stops) he used in his organ works composing them in a form of French organ terminology unused elsewhere and not to be compared to organ music of other countries. Franck published four books containing his complete organ works published by Editions Durand.

The three chorals by César Franck is his last masterpiece created just very little before his death. This work is also considered as a crown achievement of French romantic music as a whole. Three chorals can of course be performed separatively though now I wanted to perform them all in same concert and it happens now actually for the second time in my life. The first time was at the Kallio church, Helsinki in June, 2022 and I also performed the First choral in my concert at the Laurentskerk in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in July 2022.

Peteris Vasks` music is very dear to me. Te Deum became a title of my cd recorded at the prestigious Walcker (an important German organ builder) from the 1880`s at the Riga cathedral. I recorded Vasks´ works with co-operation with the composer in 2010 and published by Alba label. Te Deum is one of the most performed works ever in my concerts with a couple of the Bach master pieces (Fantasia and fugue in G minor and Prelude and fugue in E minor). I have performed Te Deum in Paris, Zagreb, Polotsk in Belarus, in New York, Auckland, New Zealand, in Mexico City and in many other venues. Te Deum here has nothing to do with Gregorian chant. It is simply Vasks´ happy and joyful outburst of happiness of the Latvian independence liberated from the Moscow fist. Te Deum is very easy to cope with. It is mostly almost a tonal and happily ending work but with strong presence of sad but persistent way of surviving art.

Tuomas Pyrhönen