Search - Els Biesemans - organ (Van Bever Organ;Brussels) :: Symphonic Organ Music from Brussels and Paris

World premiere recordings. This CD presents unknown works of the Brussels organ school composed at the time of the First World War. They are framed by pieces by two figureheads of the Parisian organ school: César Franck, the true founder of the genre of the organ symphony, and Louis Vierne, who as a pupil of Franck and Widor was a living link between the two most important centres of organ playing at that time. The work of the young French composer Valéry Aubertin also has its roots in this French symphonic tradition, but with a contemporary and personal twist. The brothers Adrien and Salomon Van Bever can be reckoned as the most important Belgian organ builders at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Their greatest work, alongside the organ in the church of Saint-Sauveur in Lille - their opus magnum - is the organ of the Dominican Church in Brussels (1910); this is the most important Van Bever organ that has survived and the largest that they built in Belgium. With its three manuals, two swell-boxes and variable combinations, the organ is symphonic in character and occupies a unique place amongst the different instruments of Brussels' organ heritage. Els Biesemanswas born in Antwerp in 1978 and studied organ, piano and chamber music at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven. She won first prize at the 2003 International Ciurlionis Organ and Piano Competition in Lithuania, second prize at the 2004 International Organ Competition Musahino-Tokyo and third prize at the 2004 Concours d Orgue de la Ville de Paris. She has already performed extensively throughout Europe as well as in Russia. Her great virtuosity, wide repertoire and musical maturity are continually praised by press and public alike. She is the organist of the monumental Van Bever organ of the Dominican Church in Brussels.