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Writer's pictureGethin Thomas

"Quickies" 3 - Duruflé

OK, so we are starting with an accent on the e, so that's a clue about where we are going. This is a weird one, and it's all because of a concert I went to yesterday. It's one of those times in your life when many threads suddenly meet in what seems to be an amazing series of coincidences and connections.


This is Buckfast Abbey in Buckfastleigh, Devon, venue for said concert yesterday. The Abbey is itself suitable for its own post on my blog but that will have to wait for another day, so I won't say much about the Abbey here.


In the British sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" one of the characters, "Uncle Albert", started most of his anecdotes with the line "In the war" when everyone would groan as another unlikely tale emerged.


So I am now approaching my "Uncle Albert" phase in life when I say, about 45 years ago I stumbled upon a second hand recording of Duruflé's Requiem. Most people have never heard of it and it is not often performed. I had never heard of it myself, when I bought it.


This was a time when digital music would have been science fiction. I went to college and over the road from the college was a second hand record store. You could buy obscure second hand classical records for a pound, so obscure that they may never even have been played before. That was how I discovered Duruflé's requiem. I have over that intervening time probably listened to it over 500 times and pretty much know it by heart. I wore out the record many years ago and advanced on to CD versions and then MP3, settling on the version sung by "La Maîtrise de garçons de Colmar", I have never seen it or heard it performed live until yesterday. But "there is more" as another catch phrase goes.


I had never read up on Duruflé and didn't know much about him or the background to the piece. At this point I will add the seemingly irrelevant fact that a few months ago as part of my blog I did a series of pieces about the Singers' of Paignton, the Singer sewing machine inventor and his family. He had quite a few children and a couple of his daughters married into French aristocracy. They had moved to Paignton from Paris to escape the Franco Prussian War.


When I booked the concert tickets I paid little regard to the rest of the programme, whatever it was, I could grin and bear it, just to hear the Duruflé. When we were seated I started to browse the programme information. The concert started with Ravel, which was great because that was another second hand record discovery. The Ravel piece was Pavane pour une infante défunte or (Pavane for a dead Princess). I hadn't made the connection yet. I also hadn't realised that we were attending a premiere of this new arrangement by Rupert Gough, of a piece originally written in 1899. Ravel dedicated his piece to his patron the Princesse de Polignac.


There followed some shorter Duruflé pieces and then an organ concerto by Poulenc. I had heard of Poulenc but knew less about him than I did about Duruflé.


I was so ignorant about the work of Poulenc that the Concerto pour orgue, orchestre à cordes et timbales, absolutely and unexpectedly knocked me off my feet, or would have, had I not been already seated. It was astounding, and gave me goosebumps most of the way through as it alternated between delicate and subdued strings to mind blowing, abbey shaking, thundering, organ chords.


When it ended there was an interval so I checked out the details in the programme to find out more. The concerto premiered in 1938 and, knock me off my feet again, it premiered with Duruflé playing the organ. Wow! This concerto is also dedicated to the Princesse de Polignac, you can see where this is going.


The Princesse de Polignac is none other than Winnaretta Singer, daughter of the sewing machine magnate of New York, Paris and Paignton.


Winnaretta Singer married the Prince de Polignac and presided over a Parisian Salon still unsurpassed for the creative endeavours that emerged from her patronage. Between the World Wars the music room of the Polignac Mansion in Paris played host to many of the literary and musical greats of the 20th century with first performances of Fauré and Debussy, new commissions by Stravinsky, Satie (another of my second hand discoveries) and Poulenc and regular visits from authors and artists such as Proust, Colette and Monet.


Back to Duruflé's Requiem and this was the perfect way to end the evening and it was everything and more than I expected to hear. The performances were superb by the Choir of Buckfast Abbey and the Southern Sinfonia, directed by Matthew Searles and with the organist Charles Maxtone-Smith. The Abbey itself contributed to the incredible sound with it's beautiful acoustics.


This concert will remain in my memory for a long time, not least for all of the sudden realisations and links that completed a complex picture. In another twenty years it might make another "Uncle Albert" moment. The programme of pieces was a masterstroke and I feel a little bit like it was all put together just for me.


You will find some links to the other posts below.



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