Advent and Christmas (4): Puer natus in Bethlehem - Partita

A series of Advent and Christmas chorale preludes and variations.
Organist: Joachim Scheufele-Leidig, Germany

Gaël Liardon (18 December 1973 – 21 October 2018) was a Swiss classical keyboard player, composer and academic.

Born in Lausanne, he studied harpsichord, organ and continuo playing with Pierre-Alain Clerc [fr] and Jovanka Marville [fr], piano with Freddy Balta [fr], and improvisation with Rudolf Lutz. He has been organist of the church of Villamont, Lausanne, from 1995.

In 2009, he obtained a diploma of teaching theory at the Geneva University of Music, with distinction. He teached music pedagogy at the Geneva Conservatory.

In 1997, he created the Festival de Musique Improvisée de Lausanne and also participated in the creation of the research group on improvisation of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

In 2011, he founded the Sweelinck Ensemble in Geneva.

Joachim Scheufele-Leidig writes:
Liardon was a great master of small forms such as the sequence of variations. His baroque-style organ works are never formulaic reproductions or a style copy, but equally inspired as well as artistically focused on the musically essential. The Partita on "Puer natus" includes a four-part chorale movement, as well as eleven one to three-part variations, and is stylistically inspired by the choral part played by Pachelbel. In the eleventh place a choral prelude of the same name by the contemporary church musician Erik-Jan van der Hel is inserted. Thus, a total of twelve variations are framed by the chorale, which sounds at the beginning with a melody-accented Cornett registration, and at the end, at the same time as a solemn plenum.