XAVER VARNUS (ORGAN) & ANASTASIA RIZIKOV (PIANO): EXTRACTS FROM THE FIRST MUSIC VESPER

Extracts from Bach's Chaconne and Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Filmed live on March 1, 2020. 21 year-old Canadian pianist Anastasia Rizikov has started performing piano at the age of five as a young prodigy. Since her orchestral debut at the age of 7 with the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra she has won numerous international piano competitions, and performed in many famous concert halls in Europe, North America, and Asia. She has worked with great conductors and musicians, such as Peter Oundjian, Emmanuel Ax, and Bernhard Gueller among others, and she recorded a CD with NAXOS. Miss Rizikov holds a Concert Artist Diploma from Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, where she studied with Professor Marian Rybicki, while continuing her studies with her life-long teacher in Toronto, Maia Spis. Anastasia’s concert schedules have taken her to Asia, all over Europe, the United States, and Canada, where she has played in such prestigious halls and spaces such as Carnegie Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, Koerner Hall, Fazioli Hall, Auditorio Manuel de Falla, Hong Kong City Hall, and the Kremlin. According to ticket offices and newspapers, Xaver Varnus is among the three most popular organists in the world – it is nearly impossible to get tickets to his sell-out concerts. He has played virtually every important organ in the world, including those in Bach’s Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Washington Cathedral, Notre Dame, Saint-Sulpice and Saint-Eustache in Paris, Berliner Dom, Canterbury Cathedral, as well as the largest existing instrument in the world, the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia. Organist, improviser, author, lecturer and media personality, Varnus has had a dramatic impact on the popular audience’s acceptance and appreciation of organ music. Over the course of his career, Varnus has played to more than six million people worldwide, recorded fifty-five albums, made seventy concert films, and written five books. His videos have surpassed sixteen million views on YouTube (   / xavervarnus  . His “Quadruple Platinum Disc Award” winning album “From Ravel to Vangelis” (SONY, 2007), is the best-selling collection of organ recordings ever. After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. The vivid church of Toronto, St. Elizabeth’s offers a quiet, contemplative space in which to encounter great classical music. Away from the hustle and bustle of the concert hall, and without its pretensions, they afford a space where the music and thoughts become the sole focus instead of the performers. A liturgy can offer something deeper than a concert. To hear superb classical music performed by world-renowned virtuosos in the context of the short liturgy is really the best way, even if you’re not religious. We, the St. Elizabeth of Hungary Roman Catholic community of Hungarian heritage, endeavor to live the Gospel through inclusion and commitment. Sunday Twilight Music Vespers at 6 p.m., after the 5 p.m. Catholic Mass with Gregorian music. Come and just let the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven wash over you.