Alex Weimann – organ
Victoria Children’s Choir – Madeleine Humer, director
Christ Church Cathedral, Quadra at Rockland, Victoria V8V 4X1 (enter from Burdett St)
Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Seniors/Students, available at Christ Church Cathedral office, Ivy’s Book Shop, Long & McQuade, Munro’s Books, Tanner’s (Sidney). On-line: www.pacbaroque.com Pre-concert talk at 7:15pm
Couperin was as much at home in organ loft as in royal apartments. His court appointment required him to provide music for Louis XIV at his chapel in Versailles for the first three months of each year, then return to Paris where he continued a succession of Couperins that held the post of organist at the church of Saint-Gervais for 173 years (1653-1826).
Although not in any way pompous, Couperin’s church music is marked by a solemn stateliness, reflecting the demands the demands of the court and the tastes of and elderly Louis XIV who appreciated order, serenity, and restraint above all else. Both of Couperin’s organ masses are considered amongst his indisputable masterpieces. In a rare full performance of one of these masses, the esteemed baroque specialist Alexander Weimann (organ) and the voices of the Victoria Children’s Choir will reveal a religious experience of ‘intimate spirituality, purity of feeling and sense of wonder’.
This concert is part of Pacific Baroque Festival 2018: “Le Grand Siècle – Music in the Glow of the Sun King” (15-18 February): www.pacbaroque.com.
“Just as there is a great distance between grammar and rhetoric, there is also an infinite distance between fingering charts and fine playing.” – François Couperin