She was a fellow student of Debussy, admired by Saint-Saëns, and encouraged by the publisher Alphonse Leduc to create ever new works: Mélanie Bonis, a French composer who fell into obscurity after her death in 1937. Her impressionistic atmospheric picture Le Songe de Cléopâtre (The Dream of Cleopatra) from 1909 is beguilingly beautiful in its sophisticated orchestration and intoxicatingly sensual in its sound. A real discovery! The organ concerto by the contemporary Swiss composer Valentin Villard, written exactly one hundred years later, is also sonicly fascinating: it begins shimmering and undulating and ends with a rushing apotheosis. All of this is exactly the right thing for the dazzling star organist Anna Lapwood, who, to top it all off, also presents a French classic: the monumental organ symphony by Saint-Saëns. At her side: David Reiland from Belgium, head of the Orchestre National de Lorraine and the Sinfonietta Lausanne.

Valentin Villard

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Jan 24, 2026

Organ Symphony With Anna Lapwood · Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra

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