Le Chœur de Paris: From Bach to our time at Notre Dame des Blancs Manteaux
About the Event
In this highly‐anticipated concert, hear the mellifluous sounds of classical music by Bach, Pärt, Britten, Barber and Foison at Paris's treasured and world‐renowned Eglise Notre‐Dame‐des‐Blancs‐Manteaux.
Le Chœur de Paris invites you to a musical journey through time, a new and moving encounter between Johann Sebastian Bach and four composers of the 20th and 21st centuries: Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, Arvo Pärt and Michèle Foison.
The common thread running through the program is Bach's influence. Even though the styles of these four composers of our time differ significantly from those of their famous predecessor and more than three centuries lie between their compositions, there are inseparable links between them.
Britten, one of the most important figures in English music in the 20th century, explored all musical genres. Like the music of Bach, his music touches everyone, whether music lover or beginner. And besides, aren't the 'Five Spiritual Songs' written by Bach and arranged by Britten forever associated with their names?
The music of S. Barber, a contemporary of Britten, is 'timeless': beautiful, emotional melody lines and harmonies that penetrate us. Vladimir Horowitz said about his famous Adagio: 'It is a very sad and at the same time majestic piece, it sounds religious…. Actually, it sounds like Bach.' In 1968, Barber published Mutations from Bach, based on the cantata 'Christe, du Lamm Gottes.'
Arvo Pärt's compositions grab us with their high expression of love, probably surpassed only by Bach. Pärt's music carries an impressive spiritual and emotional charge: it makes silence sing, lets it be inhabited by a sacred lyricism . Britten‐Pärt, two composers whose names remain linked in music: After Britten's death, Pärt wrote the 'Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten,' a masterful work both in its conception and execution.
A student of Olivier Messiaen, Michèle Foison composes with the same love of color and nature as her famous teacher, the same affinity for faith, perhaps with a more accessible melodic line and language that touches from the first notes.
Barber, Britten, Pärt and Foison: composers of our time who eschew the experiments of their contemporaries and return to the basics: Harmonies, musicality, melodic lines. Like Bach, they bring with them the deep conviction that music, that wonderful universal language, can build a bridge between heaven and earth.
A unique concert full of harmonies, honoring the human voice, 'the most beautiful and moving of all instruments'.
