Flor Peeters was born in Tielen, a small village near Antwerp in Belgium. The youngest of eleven children, he was a prodigy, winning a host of prizes at the Lemmens Institute and going on to worldwide acclaim as performer, composer, and pedagogue. He was organist of St. Rombout cathedral in Mechelen for 60 years, and was made Baron Peeters by the King of the Belgians when he retired as Director of the Antwerp Conservatoire. Peeter’s jubilant tribute to the plainsong theme Hail Mary, Star of the Sea was dedicated to his friend Charles Tournemire, Franck’s successor at St. Clotilde in Paris.

Program notes © 2009, Dame Gillian Weir