• About Hortus
• CDs
• Books
• Series
• Artists

Emmanuel Pélaprat

Harmonium

A musician beyond the mainstream of the French musical landscape, he feliciously cultivates a career as a versatile performer and scholar, two mutually enhancing activities within his insatiable appetite for music, constantly on the lookout for new discoveries.
Born in Toulouse, he first studied in the conservatory of that city, in particular with Jan Willem Jansen for the harpsichord and Michel Bouvard for the organ, garnering seven diplomas, prior to entering the Paris Conservatory where he obtained two Diplomas for Higher Studies with honors; he is one of a handful of musicians who earned three Premiers Prix in the same year, in different disciplines.
With a longstanding attraction to research, he subsequently entered the university system. Presently he is a Professor at the University of Bordeaux III. Emmanuel Pélaprat is also co-incumbant at the Eugène Puget organ (1878) of the church of Notre-Dame du Taur in Toulouse.
Combining his penchant for research and for Romantic music, he is an enthusiastic advocate of the harmonium d’art, a unduly little-known instrument. He has played the Petite Messe Solennelle by Rossini under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner and performs regularly abroad.
His demanding approach to musical sources has led him quite naturally towards historic 19th-century instruments, of which he has a collection. His favoured builders are Mustel for the harmonium and Érard for the piano, whose 90-note ‘extra-grand concert model’ (1884) he plays, ‘the most refined concert piano ever conceived’, as E. M. Frederick puts it.