Guy Weitz: In Paradisum for Organ
Belgian Organist, composer, Organ reformer and teacher Guy Weitz was born in Verviers and studied in Paris but fled to London in 1914 at the outbreak of war, where he lived the rest of his life. A brilliantly accomplished and respected Organist, he was personal Organist to the Archbishop of Westminster and for fifty years was the Organist at the Farm Street Church in Mayfair, London.By most accounts, he was tricky, irascible person who wrote demanding post-Romantic music mostly in the French style, including two symphonies for Organ. In Paradisum is one of his lesser-known works, beginning in C minor with a series of rising motifs to arrive at a tranquil middle interlude scored entirely in the bass clef and ending with an untimed bar of pianissimo echo viole and voix celeste figures before returnting to tempo primo and Orchestral textures. It is a piece that requires some application to get to the heart of, perhaps not unlike the composer.
