Seven Steps to Bach

Kristel Pärtna (soprano)
Aare Tammesalu (cello)
Piret Aidulo (organ)

Programme: Lepnurm, Dupré, Guilmant, Lemmens, Hesse, Rinck, Kittel, Bach

The title of the concert refers to a rare continuity in the world of music—a connection that links the Estonian organist and composer Hugo Lepnurm directly to Johann Sebastian Bach. Lepnurm furthered his studies in Paris with Marcel Dupré, whose teacher Alexandre Guilmant had studied under Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens. Lemmens’s teacher Adolf Friedrich Hesse, in turn, studied with Christian Heinrich Rinck, whose own teacher was Bach’s favourite pupil, Johann Christian Kittel. Through the relationships between musician-teachers and their pupils, the masters’ art of interpretation and musical principles were passed down from generation to generation—for example, Bach’s pedal-playing technique, which had fallen into oblivion and with which Lemmens astonished Parisian audiences in 1852. The organ tradition that has continued unbroken to this day (Piret Aidulo was a student of Professor Hugo Lepnurm at the Tallinn State Conservatory) confirms that classical music is not merely history, but a living tradition.