The great organist Jean Guillou (1930-2019), holder as he was (from 1963 to 2015) of the gallery of the Saint-Eustache church in Paris, had always dreamed of “taking the organ out of the churches and give another life”, as he had declared to Agence France-Presse, in April 2015. Interested in the barrel organ, the song of the whales, he will have even collaborated 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 could have enabled him to perform in the forest…
This is more or less what Iveta Apkalna accomplished during a concert filmed at dawn, in the open air and by the sea, on a Latvian shore, and filmed by Agita Cane-Kile, in Lever concert sun with Iveta Apkalna. Dressed as a character from Star Trek. The Next Generation, in a page costume that seems to have been revisited by Cardin or Courrèges, the Latvian organist is at the raised console of an electronic instrument whose sound will give allergies to fans of the great games of a Clicquot (the great factor 18th century organ building, not champagne wine, which is the other branch of the family).
Dry as a cudgel, as captured by Arte’s cameras and microphones, the sound of the instrument is of course amplified for the public. Playing outdoors is never ideal, at least in open spaces with no sound reflection; but we also know concert halls where the installed organs sound so dry that we want to give them a drink.
Cistercian simplicity
The floor under the instrument’s pedalboard is covered with a reflective surface. In such a way that, skilfully filmed, the visual continuity between it and the slack sea in the morning has the effect of an infinity pool whose water line 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 on the floor, squatting – or on the tambura with his guru, Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996).
You could also imagine yourself in a lunar and fascinating film by Paolo Sorrentino when, at the start of the concert, the slack music resounds, of a disconcerting Cistercian simplicity, by Peteris Vasks, a Latvian composer who is sometimes heard in the rich soundtracks by the Italian filmmaker – who also likes the works of the more famous Estonian Arvo Pärt.
The effect, which mixes these timeless polyphonies next to a sea with bluish reflections under a pale pink sky, is striking. We will hear successively, from Vasks, White Scenery (Die Jahreszeiten I, 1980), originally for piano; then Hymnus, written for and dedicated to Iveta Apkalna, who premiered it in May 2019 on the organ of the Walt Disney Concert Hall – a room built by Frank Gehry – in Los Angeles. A transcription of the famous Chaconne for solo violin by Bach follows.
The concert ends (before an encore adapted from L’Arlésienne, by Bizet) with the musical piece Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr by another Latvian composer, Aivars Kalejs, whose solar figures snort against the backdrop of a sun which has now risen above the horizon line.
Are the intense rays that the organist then takes on the face the reason for the many hitches we hear? In this kind of music, and especially on the beach, the slightest grain of sand is fatal.
