Matinee: Organ & Harp

Alexander Borodin aimed to capture the “entire colour palette of the Orient” in his Polovtsian Dances. This was the famous ballet music extracted from Act II of the composer’s opera Prince Igor which took international concert halls by storm ever since its first performance by the Ballets Russes in 1909. The Korean organist Shin-Young Lee will be presenting her own breathtaking virtuoso version of this classic orchestral piece before joining Marie-Pierre Langlamet in a performance of Liszt’s no less challenging concert study Un sospiro featuring numerous hair-raising technical features such as the swift crossing of hands. Two pieces by Georg Friedrich Händel then take us into the opulent music of the Baroque era: the famous Passacaglia from the Keyboard Suite in G minor in an arrangement by Shin-Young Lee is followed by the Concerto for Harp in B flat major for which the French harpist Marcel Grandjany added a sonorous cadenza in 1930. Shin-Young Lee’s version of Camille Saint-Saëns’ mezzo soprano aria Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix from his Biblical opera Samson et Dalila provides a clear demonstration of why the organ has gone down in music history as the “queen of instruments”. After the well-known Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in the version for organ and harp, the concert is concluded by Louis Vierne’s Carillon de Westminster from his Pièces de Fantaisie op. 54, a brilliant adaptation of the chimes of Westminster which builds up to a magnificent tonal climax.