Isabelle Demers: Bach, Stravinsky & Brahms

Demers is known for her fearless programming and dazzling technique, matched by a deep understanding of her instrument’s immense expressive range.

Her performances reveal the organ’s colours and sonic capabilities at their most ground-shakingly powerful – and also their most intimate.

Demers opens her eclectic recital with Bach’s classic Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch, which transform a simple seasonal hymn into a work of captivating complexity and growing grandeur.

Demers’ own arrangement of the graceful Gavotte from Stravinsky’s Pulcinella sits alongside the dark energy of Alkan’s Grand prélude. Rachel Laurin’s Sweelinck Variations gaze back four centuries to reimagine the Renaissance Dutch master in the vivid sounds of today.

After Flor Peeters’ majestic Toccata, fugue et hymne sur Ave maris stella, Demers closes her concert with Rachel Laurin’s organ reimagining of Brahms’ Variations and fugue on a theme by Handel.

Originally conceived for piano, this milestone in Romantic music is reborn in brilliant colours and contrapuntal power.