Jean-Charles Ablitzer

Jean-Charles Ablitzer (b. Grandvillars, 5 August 1946) is a French organist and organ teacher, whose main interest is in music and organs of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Biography.
Ablitzer was born in Grandvillars in the Territoire de Belfort, in which department he has lived almost all his life. At first self-taught, he later studied with Pierre Vidal at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. Since 1971 he has been the organist of Belfort Cathedral, with its historical Valtrin/Callinet/Schwenkedel organ officially classed as a Monument historique. From 1971 until 2007 he was also professor of organ at the Belfort conservatory. As such, he initiated in Belfort and its environs the construction of three organs of very different styles:
This has turned Belfort and the Territoire de Belfort, which has romantic instruments as well, into an ideal place to teach the organ.
His interest in historical instruments of the northern type, which led him to Germany (including East Germany before die Wende, which he regularly visited between 1976 and 1984), culminated in his efforts on behalf of the reconstruction of the organ David Beck built for the chapel of Gröningen castle in 1596 and on behalf of the restoration of its case; at present this organ is in Saint Martin's in Halberstadt. It was he who alerted the authorities to the deplorable state of this remarkable instrument, described by its one-time organist Michael Praetorius in his "Syntagma Musicum". He is still among the driving forces behind "Organum Gruningense Redivivum", the action group campaigning for the restoration of the Beck organ, although he is now its honorary president.
The music of Praetorius is particularly important for Jean-Charles Ablitzer. In 2005 he recorded Praetorius's complete organ works on the Hans Scherer organ in St Stephen's in Tangermünde (published by Alpha in 2008). On the Compenius organ in the Frederiksborg Palace, he also recorded a cd entitled "Auch auff Orgeln" with transcriptions for organ (by himself as well as by others) of vocal and instrumental music by Praetorius (Musique et mémoire productions). In 2006 he even made a slide show of a trip he made that took him "In the Footsteps of Michael Praetorius" to Wolfenbüttel, Halberstadt, Gröningen and Creuzburg, Praetorius's native city.
In addition to the complete organ works of Praetorius, Ablitzer's discography includes those of Buxtehude, Brahms and Pablo Bruna (all on Harmonic Records), as well as works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Böhm, François Couperin, Jean-François Dandrieu, and others.
He has performed as a soloist all over France, where festivals like the Festival d'Avignon, Toulouse les Orgues, Musique et Mémoire (in Faucogney-et-la-Mer), and the international piano Festival de La Roque-d'Anthéron (which accommodates organists and harpsichordists besides pianists) have invited him. He has also played in numerous European countries, including Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, and Italy; in Denmark he participated in the celebrations around the 400th anniversary of the Compenius organ (1610–2010) in Frederiksborg. His concert tours have also taken him to Japan.
Ablitzer has worked with singers including Catalan baritone Josep Cabré and has been a continuo player with ensembles like Gérard Lesne's Il Seminario Musicale, in which he played continuo for fifteen years.
Among the numerous radio and television broadcasts featuring Jean-Charles Ablitzer, his regular invitations to France Musique's "Organo pleno" programs deserve special mention.
Gallery: Ablitzer's Organs.
The organ of the cathedral whose organist Ablitzer is, and the organs whose building he initiated.