Venues & stages
Église Saint-Martin de Vevey
- Type
- Church / recording location
- Address
- Rue du Temple, 1800 Vevey
Between October 1976 and April 1977, the British band Yes settled at Mountain Studios in Montreux to record “Going for the One”, their first album made outside the United Kingdom. For “Awaken”, the fifteen-minute piece that closes the record, keyboard player Rick Wakeman wanted a real church organ rather than a studio instrument. So the band went down to Vevey, to the Temple Saint-Martin, whose organ was linked up to Mountain Studios for the recording. Wakeman also arranged the choral parts of the piece. The building, one of the landmarks of Vevey’s old town with its tower and its terrace overlooking the lake, can be visited freely and regularly hosts concerts.
Twice, the organ entered history
1913: the organ of Camille Saint-Saëns
Long before Rick Wakeman, the organ of the Temple Saint-Martin had already served great music. From 18 to 21 May 1913, Vevey held four days of Fêtes musicales in honour of Camille Saint-Saëns, under the direction of Gustave Doret, with concerts shared between the Casino du Rivage and the Temple Saint-Martin.
It was here, at the organ, that the seventy-seven-year-old composer played, among other works, his “Coronation March for Edward VII” and his “Symphony in C minor” with organ, accompanied by the Munich orchestra. Sixty-four years before the same instrument was linked up to Mountain Studios for “Awaken”, the church was already welcoming one of the greatest keyboard players of his time.
Henri Plumhof, titular organist
Before Camille Saint-Saëns came to try it, the church organ was held, from 1883 to 1904, by Henri Plumhof (1836-1914), the craftsman of Vevey’s musical renaissance and a great promoter of choral singing on the Riviera. The town dedicated to him a bust, now in the Salle del Castillo, and a boulevard bearing his name.
Related artists :YesRick WakemanCamille Saint-SaënsHenri Plumhof