Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g7rbq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-01T14:14:36.061Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter Twenty-Three - The North American Tours

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2023

Get access

Summary

Duruflé began touring when he was about twenty years old. While his earliest tours took him to Normandy and later to the Côte d’Azur, he eventually concertized in England, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Spain, North Africa, the former Soviet Union (USSR), Canada, and the United States.

Duruflé made his first trip to England to perform for the Organ Music Society in 1938, and returned under their aegis in September 1949. After his marriage to Marie-Madeleine Chevalier, in 1953, he shared many of his tours with her. In 1968 he conducted “Cum jubilo” in London, and in 1969 and 1970 he and Mme Duruflé played joint recitals in the Royal Festival Hall. In 1970 they also performed at Chester Cathedral. In the same year, Mme Duruflé played Vierne's Third Symphony at Westminster Abbey as part of a series that featured the complete symphonies of Vierne in observance of the centenary of the composer's birth. In 1971 the couple performed at King's College, Cambridge, then again at Royal Festival Hall, this time for a performance of the Requiem presented by the London Bach Choir and the New Philharmonia Orchestra on February 5, with David Willcocks conducting and Mme Duruflé playing the organ.

In North Africa the couple performed at the Tunis cathedral (1954), and at Rabat and Casablanca (1958). They subsequently made two tours of the Soviet Union, in 1965 and 1970. On their first tour, from November 11 to 29, which was arranged through the Service des relations culturelles de Paris, they played seven recitals to capacity audiences, appearing in Moscow and Leningrad (Russia), at the Riga Dom (Latvia), at Philharmonic Hall in Tallinn (Estonia), and in Baku (Azerbaijan).

A review of their performance on the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Bolshoi Conservatory appeared in the journal Sovetskaya Muzyka, the reviewer noting that the arrival of the couple was anticipated with much excitement. The titles of all the pieces printed in their programs “had been ‘purged’ by the soviets of all religious allusions,” so that Variations sur un noël became “Variations sur un thème populaire.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Maurice Duruflé
The Man and His Music
, pp. 228 - 237
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×