Free admission, collection
Suggested price: Fr. 25 – Fr. 20 (students, OASI)
Samuel Scheidt 1587-1644
Echo ad manuale duplex forte et lene
Johann Sebastian Bach 1685-1750
Toccata en ré mineur « dorienne » BWV 538/1
Jehan Alain 1911-1940
Choral dorien
Richard Wagner 1813-1883
Vorspiel zu « Tristan und Isolde »
(transcription pour orgue de A. W. Gottschlag)
Marco Enrico Bossi 1861-1935
Chant du soir op. 92/1
Franz Liszt 1811-1886
Evocation of the Sistine Chapel
Johann Sebastian Bach
Fugue en ré mineur BWV 538/2
Jean-Christophe Geiser, Titular organist at the Cathedral
Jean-Christophe Geiser’s musical career has taken off extremely quickly: in 1991, at the age of 26, he was appointed titular organist of Lausanne Cathedral (the largest Gothic building in Switzerland) and, from 1993, professor of organ at the Haute Ecole de Musique Vaud-Valais-Fribourg HEMU (University of Music Lausanne), where he is also head of the organ department.
Jean-Christophe Geiser is one of Switzerland’s most internationally renowned musicians. He is pursuing a brilliant career as a concert artist, which has already led him to give some 1,000 recitals in some forty countries on four continents.
He has performed in the cathedrals of Cologne, Helsinki, Brussels, Oslo, Monaco, Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Washington DC, St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Frauenkirche in Dresden, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the Town Hall in Melbourne, the Cultural Centre in Hong Kong, the Buenos Aires Organ Festival, the Spring Festival in Budapest, and many more.
Jean-Christophe Geiser has made numerous recordings, notably for various Swiss radio stations, DeutschlandRadio, Südwestfunk, Radio Russie and Bayerischer Rundfunk, and on disc for the VDE-GALLO, IFO-Verlag and FNAC-Musique labels, including the first version of Bach’s Art of the Fugue for organ and piano with Elisabeth Sombart, and the complete works for and with organ by Julien-François Zbinden.
He studied at the Bern University of the Arts, where in 1989 he obtained a piano diploma (Otto Seger’s class) and a soloist’s diploma with honours (Heinrich Gurtner’s organ class). He was twice awarded the Göhner Foundation Prize, which enabled him to further his studies in Paris with François-Henri Houbart and to attend various performance courses. In addition to his dual musical studies, he studied musicology and law at the University of Bern and qualified as a lawyer.
In 2021, he was chosen by the newspaper Le Temps as one of the 100 Swiss personalities of the year. Jean-Christophe Geiser designed the new Fisk organs at Lausanne Cathedral, inaugurated in December 2003. This is the largest musical instrument in Switzerland, and its design is unprecedented in that it combines four styles of organ building: French classical, German baroque, French symphonic and German romantic.
The SCCL, Lausanne Cathedral Concert Society
Founded in 1932, the Société des Concerts de la Cathédrale de Lausanne brings together all those who wish to develop the musical life of the Cathedral around the organ. The Society welcomes organists, instrumental ensembles, choirs and soloists from all walks of life.
