During the concert, the NFM Girls’ Choir, founded last year, will appear together with organist Tomasz Głuchowski, who programs organ concerts at the National Forum of Music on a daily basis. The artists will perform works by three composers associated with 19th-century Paris – Léo Delibes, César Franck, and Félix-Alexandre Guilmant.

The output of Léo Delibes is associated with broadly understood stage works – primarily ballet and opera. His most famous compositions include the ballets Coppélia and Sylvia, and when it comes to opera, titles such as Le roi l’a dit – a comedy set in the times of Louis XIV – or the enthusiastically received Lakmé are the most often staged operas by Delibes. The only sacred work preserved in the artist’s oeuvre was his Messe brève – a small mass written in 1867. The Romantic composition, filled with emotional depth, was written for children’s voices and organ, although today it is also performed in a version for female choirs.

The work will be preceded by Troisième Choral, belonging to the last cycle of organ works by César Franck, a composer and legendary virtuoso of this instrument. The Chorale in A minor, which will be played tonight, is also the last work of the artist, created in the autumn of 1890, at the end of his life. Franck dedicated it to his pupil, Augusta Holmès, a French composer whose work was unjustly forgotten until the beginning of the 21st century. The organ repertoire of Félix-Alexandre Guilmant, as in the case of Franck, was really extensive. The concert will be crowned with his Sonata No. 5 in C minor op. 80. The composition, consisting of five links, is music full of brilliance, perfectly illustrating how powerful, and at the same time beautiful and subtle, the sound of organs can be.