Saturday came as another stunning day.
Needing to get some work done, I headed over to les Jardin
des Plantes to find a bench and do some writing. No WiFi, better concentration,
and I wanted to go there anyway.
En route I stopped for a quickie lunch – saucisson sec
sandwich (with pickles), pastis and café at the café L’Institu Nouvel on the
Left Bank. Basic but pleasant.
All but the saucisson.
The Jardin is a 15-minute walk from the flat. The name means
that it is a not a flower garden but more of a botanical garden, and one with a
zoo and natural history museum at that.
It’s a lovely place and on this gorgeous Saturday an
intensely bustling one; finding a peaceful shaded (it was quite warm) bench
took some time. I did find one, and finished a major product, started a piece
of fiction, and did some reading. I wanted to visit the zoo but the line was too long. I did see a red panda on a tree in its enclosure.
Then, with some spare time, I strolled around the Jardin and
took pictures, some of which you see here. This is a place that will reward further
attention.
Back to the flat for a Badoit and a brief pause before heading
to the first of two free organ recitals on the day. I grabbed the 68 bus almost
at my doorstep and rode to the Sevres-Babylone Metro on the Left Bank, passing,
among other sights, the diner Breakfast in America (no thanks), the Ecole
Polytechnique (grand old building), the Sorbonne (even the chimneys are marked (RF, Republic de France), the classic Odeon Theatre, and cafés jammed to the roof with people.
I then hopped the 12 metro to Solferino, named after a rare Louis
Napoleon III military success, and noted the wonderful old signs over the
tunnels heading north (Montmartre) and south (Montparnasse).
After a short walk and an all-too-brief visit to the lovely
Square Samuel Rousseau in front of the church, I went into the 19th-century
Neo-Gothic Basilique St. Clotilde.
This was the setting for an hour of organ music played by Matthieu Odinet on the church’s legendary Cavaillé-Coll
instrument.
This was the church where Cesar Franck and Gabriel Pierne were the
organists, Franck for 31 years; Charles Tournemire and Jean Langlais also ruled
for decades.
The program was half
French – Franck, Johan Alain, and Marcel Dupre – and half Germanic, Bach,
Brahms and Liszt. My companions showed up for the second half. This was the
first Brahms organ music I had ever heard, a pleasant prelude. I especially
liked Alain’s fantasy and the Bach as well.
We strolled around
the neighborhood, including seeing the Assemblee National building bedecked in
tricolors, then back to the flat for a rest before heading to Notre Dame for a
recital by British organist Paul Carr.
The concert was
delayed because the late-day Palm Sunday mass had not ended – you’d think the
damn place was a working church or something – but was well worth the wait. The
Allegro from Louis Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 2 got things underway in rousing
fashion in what it is to me the greatest church organ I have ever heard. A
gentle prelude by William Harris followed, then a marvelously Protestant song
and fugue by Samuel Wesley, the kind of thing I grew up hearing in Presbyterian
churches. To hear it at Notre Dame, an arch-citadel of Catholicism, made me smile.
I love the English
composer Ralph Vaughan Williams but, like Brahms, had not heard any of his
organ music before. The “Hymn Prelude to Rhosymedre” was typical VW, meandering
a bit, but pleasant; but my companion who was along hated it. A lively Allegro
from Edward Bairstow followed, and then came David Briggs (born in my birth
year, 1962)’s Theme and Variations on Laudi Spirituali, which was well-crafted
and quite enjoyable, ending in a full-blast intensity of sound that my
companion called “music to scare gargoyles by”. An unmemorable piece by Eugene
Reuschel ended a terrific recital; Carr was given a enthusiastic ovation.
To me, the sound of
the Notre Dame organ is one of the best reasons to come to Paris.
We then headed off
for dinner … which deserves its own post.
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