Travel Tip: Classical Music in Belgium
Skip Sempé, harpsichord

Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georg Friedrich Händel, Henry Purcell, Frédéric Chopin

Skip Sempé, harpsichord

You shouldn't play the masterpieces of the past in the way you would watch a funeral pass by, paralysed by respect. A thought-provoking statement, at a time when authenticity is one of the watchwords of early-music performance! One should not, however, be surprised by Wanda Landowska's credo, when one recalls that it is thanks to this atypical musician, born in Warsaw in 1879, that the harpsichord and its repertoire were rescued from oblivion. A true pioneer in this field, Landowska, who described herself at the end of her life as "an old Jewess crazy about music", got the firm of Pleyel to make a harpsichord with which she played concerts all over the world and thanks to which she was able to train numerous other musicians. Skip Sempé, a virtuoso moved by the fascinating world of this brilliant artist, invites us to discover her at a concert preceded by a talk.

Skip Sempé will play both a Couchet harpsichord dating from 1646 and a genuine Pleyel specially restored for the occasion.