Organ Matinee with Jean-Baptiste Robin

The organ matinée series, in which Sweden’s leading organists perform, has grown in recent years and become highly popular. The organ at Konserthuset Stockholm, with its magnificent façade, is one of the best known in Europe and, with its 6,100 pipes, also one of the largest.

Here we encounter Jean-Baptiste Robin, one of the foremost French concert organists of our time. He is organist at the Royal Chapel at the Palace of Versailles and Professor of Organ and Composition at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional in Versailles. Among his teachers were leading figures such as Marie-Claire Alain and Olivier Latry.

Jean-Baptiste Robin is also active as a composer, as reflected in his programme, which also includes his own arrangements of French music. Rameau was a great innovator of the French Baroque, and Les Indes galantes is ballet music – among its excerpts is the well-known Les sauvages. In the early 20th century, Ravel in turn looked back to the elegance of the French Baroque in Le tombeau de Couperin, while at the same time creating a requiem for friends who had fallen in the First World War. Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) is Ravel’s tribute to the innocence of childhood.