Paul Rosoman prepares for his Polish tour at St Peter’s

Organ Concert: pieces by Buxtehude, John Stanley, J.S. Bach, Théodore Dubois, Jan Zwart, C.H.H. Parry, Nicolaus Bruhns, Noel Rawsthorne and C.V. Stanford

Paul Rosoman

St. Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Friday, 15 April, 7pm

It was a pleasant change to be at an organ recital that was well attended; perhaps opportunity to hear again the recently-restored St. Peter’s organ was part of the draw, and maybe the time was convenient to more people than that of many organ recitals. The music was well played, the programme interesting, and we were in the hands of a capable and experienced organist. The programme was sufficiently diverse to demonstrate much of the sound variety and capability of the instrument.

This organ, of three manuals and pedals, is beautiful to look on, with its decorated pipes, and good to hear. It suits the building admirably and has a magnificent range of ranks of pipes.

Buxtehude’s Praeludium in C is an intriguing piece of writing. Although the printed programme had excellent notes, those for this work, written by Professor Hans Davidsson, were perhaps a little abstruse in places. The work is known in English as ‘Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne’, and this title makes the structure a little clearer, though it is not the original title. However, it was good to have the titles of the episodes of Kühnau’s first Biblical Sonata printed; Buxtehude used the opening of that work to open the Praeludium. Kühnau’s sonata outlined the story of David and Goliath, and so it has been suggested that Buxtehude had this in mind. The nine titles, as used by Kühnau follow the course of this story, including the Israelites reaction to what is happening.

Buxtehude’s splendid writing was well exploited by the organist, with contrasting and varied registrations resulting in a dramatic performance.

Compared with Buxtehude and Bach, John Stanley’s writing is not very interesting, However, in his Organ Voluntary Op.5 no.1, the splendid reed pipes got a good work-out, and there was a brilliant final section on the flutes.

Bach’s Partita ‘O Gott, du Frommer Gott’ (in which title occurred one of a number of unfortunate misprints in the programme) is a set of variations on the chorale, the original hymn being by one Johann Heermann. It is thought to be a very early work of Bach’s. The opening statement of the chorael was a bold forte; the eight following variations illustrate musically the words of the hymn. The first variation contrasted the great and swell manuals very engagingly, while another employed the delicious flute pipes. The final variation began with a bright forte and featured diapasons and reeds, the music contrasting the two manuals.

While the printed programme gave the dates for some of the compositions, the dates for the composers were not given, which was a pity. With so many composers’ works being performed, it would have been interesting to compare the styles and settings from different periods.

After Bach, there was a great leap forward, to Théodore Dubois (1837-1924), whose Adoratio et Vox Angelica was played. A quiet opening on the swell manual presaged a mainly quiet but charming piece, with little use of the pedals. Both vox humana and tremulant were employed in this attractive music.

Another jump in time brought us to Dutch organ composer Jan Zwart. Thanks to an organist friend (he who introduced Paul Rosoman to Zwart’s music), I have discovered his dates were 1877 to 1937. His Een Vaste Burg is Onze God (the Dutch version of the well-known Lutheran hymn ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’) began as a very straightforward piece, employing bright sounds and fugal passages on the pedals throughout the delightful working out of the hymn melody; at other times the music was pungent. The melody was always apparent, though occasionally it needed a little more phrasing. The final variation on the tune was grand and brilliant. The friend described it aptly as in ‘a romantic style for the twentieth century’.

Elegy for 7th April 1913 by Hubert Parry was thus named because it was written for the funeral of the 14th Earl of Pembroke on that day. One would hardly have believed that Stravinsky had written Firebird three years earlier when listening to this slushy piece of Victoriana. As mentioned in the programme notes, Parry also wrote the famous Jerusalem, and the coronation anthem I was Glad, both of which have much more character than this little elegy.

Nicolaus Bruhns lived from 1665 to 1697, in Schleswig-Holstein. His Praeludium in G was a brilliant piece, with solo pedal passages throughout. Based on alternating toccata sections and fugal sections, it called for considerable technical dexterity, which it received.

Contemporary British composer Noel Rawsthorne was featured next. Like the vast majority of composers for the organ, he is an organist himself. His waltz from Dance Suite was described by Paul Rosoman as a tongue-in-cheek little piece. The Suite was commissioned for a concert celebrating the completion of the restoration of the organ in Huddersfield Town Hall in England, so it was appropriate to play it here, to cele-brate the completion of the restoration of the St. Peter’s organ. Probably because of the motive for its composition, it used a variety of registrations, including tremulant.

To end the recital, Rosoman played the composition of another Englishman (making a total of four English composers, three German, one French and one Dutch), viz. Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). Postlude in D is a fine piece, and not too Victorian in character, despite having some of the grandeur of that era, combined with ‘echoes [of] the Irish folk idiom in its modal language and melodic contours’, as the programme note had it.

The programme presented a span of historical periods and of nationalities, all played with taste, authority, variety, and an excellent technique.

Paul Rosoman is shortly to play in Poland, including at the 13th International Organ Festival. Friday’s appreciative audience would all wish him well for this well-deserved engagement, and others he will fulfil in Europe.

Haydn’s Last Words from organist Richard Apperley at St Paul’s

Great Music 2011: Organ recital series

Haydn’s Seven last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross (Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze)

Richard Apperley (Assistant organist, Cathedral of St Paul)

Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 15 April 12.45

The great days of a flourishing market for transcriptions of symphonies and opera chunks for the organ, or the piano, might have passed, but there remains a lingering suspicion of the practice, and an almost automatic disposition to find them improper and tasteless.

But famous successful cases must make it dangerous and silly to denigrate them as a species.

Certainly, this was an example that called for open ears and a readiness to be delighted; for that is what I was.

There are several versions of the work that was written in 1786 to a commission from the Bishop of Cadiz for performance in the Grotto Santa Cueva near Cádiz. The original was for orchestra, and Haydn later arranged it as an oratorio with both solo and choral vocal forces, and there are reduced versions for string quartet and solo piano. There is some doubt about the authenticity of the string quartet version, which is the most commonly played. Incidentally there is a version on CD from Jordi Savall’s Le Concert des Nations recorded in 2006 at the church of Santa Cueva in Cádiz.

I don’t know which source Apperley used for his arrangement. It was not the longest version as the entire performance lasted only about 45 minutes; it can otherwise take over an hour.

It’s a work comprising an introduction and seven ‘sonatas’, plus (for the orchestral version) a postlude depicting an earthquake

The introduction and seven sonatas are as follows:

Introduzione, D minor, Maestoso ed Adagio 

Sonata I (‘Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt’; Father forgive them for they know not what they do), B flat, Largo  

Sonata II (‘Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso’; Today you will be with me in Paradise), C minor, Grave e cantabile, ending in C major

Sonata III (‘Mulier, ecce filius tuus’; Behold your son, behold your mother), E major, Grave

Sonata IV (‘Deus meus, Deus meus, utquid dereliquisti me’; My God, my God, why have you forsaken me), F minor, Largo

Sonata V (‘Sitio’; I thirst), A major, Adagio

Sonata VI (‘Consummatum est’; It is foinished’), G minor, Lento, ending in G major

Sonata VII (‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum’; Father into your hands I commit my spirit), E flat, Largo

And the original orchestral version had a final movement – an earthquake, not inappropriate after the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 30 years earlier.

Il terremoto, C minor, Presto e con tutta la forza

(For which I am indebted to Wikipedia)

Wikipedia also contains interesting material on the sources of the seven ‘Words’ under ‘Sayings of Jesus on the Cross’ and much other related scholarship, via links.

I have only been familiar with the string quartet version. This arrangement came as a surprise on account of the variety of colours that are available on a large organ and which Apperley applied with great skill and taste. The Introduction was immediately arresting, shifting from bold diapason pronouncements to lightly articulated passage in high registers. There was a clear Bachian quality, but that was always coloured by sounds possible only on a post-19th century organ distinctly influenced by Franck and Vierne and Reger and so on.

The first sonata was lit with beautiful high-lying melody in delicate, sensitive arrangement. The second is more serious in tone, yet there is light in the depiction of Paradise in thoughtful little phrases on celestial flute stops.

The surprising thing about the piece is the absence of any particularly tragic or gloomy episodes. Haydn’s view of the Crucifixion seems to be of an event that should have brought a new era of enlightenment and improvement in the behaviour of men and nations. And Haydn, for the sake of the music, could forget that nothing of the sort had happened.

The third sonata, ‘Mother, behold your son’ (misnamed in the programme leaflet) is depicted through soft, sustained chords, interrupted by short phrases, and underpinned by a beautiful melody. A far cry from the expression of this episode in the multiple settings of the Stabat Mater.

Even in the most heart-rending words, in the fourth sonata, the writing is dominated by ascending scales and arpeggios, suggesting hope. The fifth sonata displayed the most imaginative range of registrations, for which the cathedral organ seemed ideally designed. Though not regarded by the experts as the finest organ in the city, its clarity, brilliance and variety are always a source of delight, to me at least.

Most impressive was the way the organ captured the quite beautiful, subsiding, moving phrases with which the last sonata ends.

As if to denigrate the work, the fact that it is a series of adagios and largos is sometimes used against it, but tempo is only one of many elements in music, and the over-riding feeling of humanity, hope and sanguinity that infuse the whole work give it an emotional depth as well as a lightening of the spirit.

And this organ arrangement and Apperley’s playing really surprised me by the way all of that was so brilliantly and musically captured. The recital was simply a great delight. How sad that so few were there!