Summer Lunchtime at Pipeworks Festival

National Symphony Orchestra 
David Leigh, conductor
Valentine Laporte, flute
David Goode, organ

Dupré Cortège et Litanie
Ibert Flute Concerto
Saint-Saëns Cyprès et lauriers

The ‘king of instruments’, the organ, shares the lunchtime limelight with the flute as both take centre stage in a delectable trio of French fancies by Dupré, Ibert and Saint-Saëns as part of this year’s Pipeworks Festival.

Organist David Goode – ‘a performer of tremendous resource… with uncompromising skill’ (Musical Opinion) – joins the National Symphony Orchestra for two evocative, miniature masterpieces, with fellow organist of Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, David Leigh, on the conductor’s podium.

Dupré’s Cortège et Litanie began its life as incidental music for a play and its later version for organ and orchestra retains its powerful emotions and surging drama. Dupré’s organ writing is at its richest here, the orchestral accompaniment a willing participant in its dark ecstasy.

Composed in celebration of victory in the First World War, the concerto in miniature of Saint-Saëns’ Cyprès et lauriers (Cypress and Laurels) moves from funereal keening, via a transformative moment of silence, to triumphant resolve and resolution, fragile peace and sweet optimism shared by organ and orchestra singing with one rousing voice.

Using the same forces as his Third, ‘Organ’, Symphony (memorably employed in the 1995 film, Babe) Ibert’s Flute Concerto dexterously translates its dense textures into something both animated (in its lively outer movements) and hypnotically melodic (in its enigmatic interior). 2022’s Irish Freemasons’ Young Musician award-winner Valentine Laporte promises a ravishing reading to remember.

Presented by National Symphony Orchestra