Music | Notre-Dame's principal organist wrote to Esa-Pekka Salonen and made a wish – now the Musiikkitalo will find out what the result will be

Could they work matters even to be in a better mess than the French organist With Olivier Latry? His regular job is as the principal organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. There he gets to play one of the finest instruments in the world. In addition to that, he constantly gives concerts around the world and thus gets to play many different instruments.

After all, that's what an organist's job is: playing whatever instrument is available. This week, Latry's program is to play one of the world's newest and most advanced organs at Musiikkitalo, when he interprets the organ part Esa-Pekka Salonen Symphony Concertante in the work.

“You can't compare them to each other”, replies Latry (b. 1962) when he is asked to compare the organs of Notre-Dame and the Musiikkitalo. “It is difficult to call any single instrument the best in the world.”

Notre-Dame's organ, inaugurated in 1868, is Aristide Cavaillé-Collin built by Rieger Orgelbau, while the Musiikkitalo organ built by Rieger Orgelbau was commissioned on New Year's Day 2024.

Notre Dame Latry describes the organ as a transcendental, i.e. supersensible, instrument with an amazing range of expression. To describe it, he tells the story of a French carpenter About Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), who had written a loud dynamics notation for his organ piece fff i.e. Forte fortissimo.

“We asked him what he wants with this label. He answered that all the voices are available, as loud as they go. Then we asked what to do later when he writes five f's ie fffff – because everything is already in use with three f's. He replied that even harder! Such a thing is possible with the organ of Notre-Dame: it can be played louder than we can imagine and also softer than we can imagine, with all the timbres of the organ.”

In April 2019 The organ of Notre-Dame was out of service when a fire broke out in the cathedral, which destroyed the central tower and a large part of the cathedral's roof. Miraculously, the organ was spared from major damage, and it has been able to be restored and cleaned from the lead dust that spread to the cathedral due to the fire. The new central tower will be completed in December 2023 and the opening of the cathedral is scheduled for December 2024.

Read more: The opening of Notre Dame will take place in a year – Macron plans to invite the Pope

All this time the cathedral has been closed and the organ has also not been played. Latry considers the closure to be relatively short, especially if you compare the five-year renovation to the cathedral's more than 850-year history. During the maintenance of the main organ in Latry, which began in 1985, the organ has been out of use in the past due to renovat
ion work. Thanks to them, there is now no perceived need for reforms during the repairs, but the organ has been built the same as it was before the fire.

“I am optimistic. It is great that the organ was not damaged. The pipes could have burned or melted, or they could have filled with water, destroying the shell organ in the center of the church. Now we just have to wait.”

Notre-Dame's organ has been cleaned, repaired and already installed, but the final filings must be coordinated with all the other renovation work that is still being done in the church. Latry says that the tuning of the organ, i.e. the fine-tuning and tuning of the different whistles and pitches, is done at night in two batches, now in spring and in October.

Latry has also been a key force in the Musiikkitalo organ project. He was asked to be a member of the organ board by a composer Kaija Saariahowhich Shadows of the Earth Latry had played the premiere of the work in Montreal in 2014. Latry also played the opening concert of the Musiikkitalo organ on New Year's Day.

Read more: When Kaija Saariaho's piece began, tears came to the eyes – Olivier Latry made the new organ of the Musiikkitalo shine

“Each organ has its own character, they are like people,” says Latry.

“The best thing we can do is to aim for coherence, togetherness. The organ of Notre-Dame belongs to the cathedral and its acoustics. The organ of the music hall belongs together with the acoustics of the concert hall. That's what we were looking for in this organ from the beginning.”

The fact that organs built in concert halls sometimes fail may be due, for example, to the fact that organs are built in concert halls that would work better in church acoustics. Efforts have been made to avoid such a mistake in the Musiikkitalo organ project.

The music house's organ's movable soundboard has four fingers. Picture: Rio Gandara / HS

The sound of the organ can also be adjusted with the feet. Picture: Rio Gandara / HS

Latry says that the preparation of a concert always involves planning the registration that best suits each instrument – that is, creating the desired timbres by combining different pitches – which can take a long time. While preparing the opening concert on New Year's Day, he spent almost 20 hours on it, even though he has been involved in the Musiikkitalo organ project from the very beginning and knows the instrument's features better than many others. Ten hours had already passed since the beginning of the week for this Friday's concert.

“This week I have also listened Jan Lehtolan and HKO's exercises in Saariaho From the shadows of the earth. Because I have heard how the organ and the orchestra play together, I have been able to adjust my registrations to Salonen's piece. With such an instrument, the planning of the registration never ends, but they can be changed even five minutes before the concert if you feel like it.”

This week has really been central in terms of concert use of the organ, for example in Saariah Shadows of the Earth and Salonen Symphony Concertante are not actual organ concerts, in which the soloist and the orchestra form clear counter-forces to each other. Instead, the organ and the orchestra work rather in cooperation in both works.

Composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and organist Olivier Latry in the Musiikkitalo concert hall on Wednesday, January 10. Picture: Rio Gandara / HS

“I am terribly happy that Esa-Pekka composed the piece for the organ. I wrote to him five years ago and suggested that his sense of orchestration and my registration skills might make a good combination.”

A Latvian organist had also approached Salo separately Iveta Apkalnaso Salonen decided to write the piece to be played by both organists.

In the composition stage Latry introduced Salonen to the possibilities of the organ at the Paris Philharmonia and also told him about the history of French organ music, to which the musicians who worked at Notre-Dame have made a solid contribution over the centuries.

When the work was later completed and Latry opened the score, he was pleasantly surprised to see Salonen quoting in the work of Perotinus Viderunt omnes -organum, which is believed to be from 1198. It is one of the earliest polyphonic works, and in it Perotinus transformed the underlying monophonic Gregorian melody into a polyphonic work.

Perotinus was one of the musicians who promoted polyphony, who worked at Notre-Dame on both sides of the 13th-century divide, and after whom the school of Notre-Dame is named in the history of music.

“That's why I got excited when I saw it Viderunt omnes as part of Salonen's new work”, says Olivier Latry, the musician responsible for the music of Notre-Dame in our time.

“Thanks for the referral!”

Olivier Latry, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Radio Symphony Orchestra at Musiikkitalo on January 12 at 7 p.m. The concert is sold out, but you can watch it on Yle channels and Areena.