Presented by the Wellington Organists’ Association

Praeludium No 2 in E minor (Bruhns); Fugue in A flat minor, WoO 8 (Brahms); Trio on ‘Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr’, BWV 676 (Bach); ‘Wondrous Love’ – Variations on a shape note hymn (Barber); Master Tallis’s Testament and Paean from Six Pieces for Organ (Howells)

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Friday 10 September, 12.45pm

This was one of the regular Friday recitals given on the cathedral organ, and it contributed importantly to the plethora of organ recitals all over the city during National Organ Month.

We heard the music director, Michael Stewart, from the rival cathedral up the road, the Sacred Heart, in the very model of a programme for a National Organ Month. It reached into lesser-known territory, but never into the quite large body of vapid music that finds its way too often into organ recitals. Absent was any music from the great 19th and 20th century French school, and for once I did not miss it, such was the pleasure and sense of discovery in the entire three-quarter hour recital.

I don’t recall hearing music by Bruhns before; he was, like Bach briefly, a pupil of Buxtehude who was based at Lübeck. Bruhns was born, a generation before Bach, in the province of Schleswig-Holstein that vaccilated between German states and Denmark, and he became organist to the Danish court at Copenhagen. This piece was the longer of two Praeludiums that he wrote in E minor; I was charmed by several passages, particularly rhythmic flute ostinati. The whole piece, which easily sustained interest through its ten minutes or so, struck me forcibly as more varied and characterful than what I know of Buxtehude; there were many phases that seemed to have been written a lot later than the late 17th century. Sadly, Bruhns died of plague in 1697, aged 31. Its brilliant playing on this fine, colourful organ made it an engrossing discovery.

Bach’s Trio in G on ‘Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ is one of three chorale preludes on this hymn that form part of he Clavier-Übung III (‘keyboard practice’: No III being the only one of the four volumes of Clavier-Übung designed for the organ). This too was clearly chosen as a diverting piece for midday with tripping rhythms in triple time, with colourful exercises that involved repeated shifts from manual to manual.

Brahms’s organ music is generally in the shadow of his orchestral, chamber and piano music and songs, but his organ music always impresses me too. This Fugue, without Opus number, written in 1856, began with a careful statement of the tune which slowly gathered strength through the increasing complexity of its fugal evolution. It impressed as an early work, not just for the singularly skilled and inventive writing which never seemed a mere academic fugal exercise or to fall into mere repetition; nevertheless its musical richness and command of fugal techniques had an engrossing, emotional impact.

Samuel Barber’s was another novelty for me, a piece based on a hymn that employed the ‘Shape note’ system, an American notation system that uses differently shaped notes to indicate pitch. A religious tune with a simple, primitive quality, it offered Barber a basis for sympathetic treatment, not through piling on complexity but by elaborating the tune, varying the harmonies and registrations, with imaginative passages in low registers over pedals to create a genuine religious feeling, that Stewart never allowed to be  overwhelmed by the forces at his disposal.

Two pieces from Herbert Howells’s Six Pieces for Organ ended the recital; the first somber and introspective, reflecting that slightly dull seriousness that characterizes some English music; that soon gave way however to robust and interesting reflective passages. The Paean began with the Swell closed, but the volume and richness of registrations steadily increased till the final phase, meandering and suspenseful, created a blaze of excitement towards the end.

It was a splendid programme designed to offer the curious plenty of rewarding discoveries, of the kind we hear too little of; but much more than that, these were all performances that were vivid in their range and imaginative in their combination of stops, rhythmically bracing, ornamented with taste and bravura, played by hands and feet with huge agility.

Wellington Organists’ Association  – National Organ Month

Simon Preston: Alleluyas
Arthur Wills: Lullaby for a Royal Prince
Flor Peeters: Aria
Jean Langlais: Organ Book
P.D.Q. Bach (alias Peter Schickele): Sonata da Circo S 3-ring (Circus Sonata)
Max Reger: Benedictus,
Healey Willan: Passacaglia and Fugue in E minor, no.2

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Tuesday, 7 September, 12.45pm

Another (poorly attended) recital in this series was quite a contrast to the previous one: this was entitled ‘Make a Joyful Noise’, and so it did on the whole, accompanied in the first half by the sounds of screams, shrieks and yells of the children from the adjacent Catholic primary school in the Cathedral’s forecourt.

It was surprising to have a programme entirely of twentieth (or nineteenth to twentieth) century composers; only one work, Reger’s, was written in the nineteenth century.   Appropriate too, since this week’s Composers of the Week, marking National Organ Week, are twentieth and twenty-first century composers for the organ.

The programme began with a work by noted organist Simon Preston.  This was perhaps the most exciting item in the whole programme.  It included intriguing harmonies and pentatonic melodies.  There was lovely use of quiet stops,  after a dramatic opening; there was a grand ending.

Arthur Wills, another British organist, wrote his piece to celebrate the birth of Prince William.  It was suitably soft, with a gentle rocking rhythm.  A very attractive piece, it reminded me of  the Adagio from Suite Modale by Flor Peeters, whose Aria followed – a slow, reflective piece, using a narrow range of notes.

The Langlais piece was improvisatory in style, and consisted of five movements: a Prelude that was very quiet and subtle, though with contrasting sections; Pastoral Song, to which the same description could be applied, then Chorale in E minor.  This featured large chords, but was still relatively soft and simple.  A reed stop was introduced, but the music remained slow – and not very interesting.  A pleasant movement for flutes followed, and then Pasticcio, which contributed more robust sound, through medieval-sounding pentatonic music with the trumpet stop.

The indefatigable P.D.Q. Bach (whose dates were given as 1907-1742?) made a welcome humorous intrusion into the programme.  Dianne Halliday reproduced Schickele’s 1995 ‘Performance Note’ and ‘Program Notes’ in the printed programme, from which we learned that the work was written for ‘your standard calliope’; I learn from my dictionary that calliope is a US term for a steam organ!    Among other amusing (dis)information in the notes was the following: “Circus Berserkus, though small, was widely traveled”.  This is marked by the fact that the titles of the movements are in four different languages.

‘Spiel Vorspiel’ was a jolly little fast waltz, employing amusing chords and intervals.  ‘Entrada Grande’ did sound rather like mechanical circus music, followed by a tedious scale passage – was this for the animals processing into the arena?  ‘Smokski the Russian Bear’ featured variations on Bach’s ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ – not on the chorale melody, but on the accompaniment  (the only bit of JSB heard in two days’ organ recitals).  It ended with a bear-like cluster of sounds.  ‘Toccata Ecdysiastica’ used chirpy flute stops, notably a 2-foot – perhaps this was dizzy ecstasy?*  A well-known tune was the bass melody.   P.D.Q. Bach’s work was quite demanding technically – and harmonically!

Max Reger’s Benedictus opened very quietly, and employed much chromatic writing, typical of the late nineteenth century, under the influence of Wagner and others.   A louder second section was followed by reversion to the very quiet mood of the opening.

Healey Willan (1873-1968) was an Englishman who spent most of his life in Canada.  I found his Passacaglia more interesting and varied harmonically than the Reger work.  It also was quite chromatic, and at times rather portentous.  The fugue was strong with a very full ending, giving rein to an extensive registration.

It was pleasing to have such a varied programme, impeccably played.

*I find that ecdysis is a real word, meaning the periodic shedding of the cuticle or exoskeleton of certain insects, and reptiles.  So perhaps the chirping was that of insects and reptiles, enthusiastically shedding their outer layers?

Wellington Organists’ Association

Kuhnau: Biblical Sonata – The combat between David and Goliath
Buxtehude: Fugue in C
C.P.E. Bach: Sonata in G minor
Kuhnau: Biblical Sonata – Hezekiah dying and restored to health
Buxtehude: Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C

St. Mary of the Angels

Monday, 6 September, 1pm

It is a pity that a mere 20 people came to hear Richard Apperley’s splendid recital on the superb, many-voiced organ at St Mary of the Angels.  Apperley is a fine performer with style and taste, and he chose an interesting programme.  There were no pot-boilers here, but seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ music, well-suited to the instrument.

The first of two Biblical Sonatas by Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722) was ‘The combat between David and Goliath’.  This was delightful music, not too complex, employing interesting word-painting, or should we say ‘painting of ideas’.  It comprised eight movements, each depicting part of the story of David and Goliath.

First was The boasting of Goliath, suitably bombastic, followed by The trembling of the Israelites at the appearance of the giant, and their prayer to God.  This featured a quiet choral melody above a tentative accompaniment.  

The following movements were:
3. The courage of David, and his keen desire to repel the pride of his terrifying enemy, with the confidence that he puts in the help of God;
4. The combat between the two and their struggle; the stone is thrown from the slingshot into the brow of the giant; Goliath falls;
5. The flight of the Philistines, who are pursued and slain by the Israelites;
6. The joy of the Israelites over their victory;
7. The musical concert of the women in honour of David;
8. The general rejoicing, and the dance of joy of the people.

The playing featured attractive registrations; it was an excellent work to demonstrate a broad range of the sounds available on this fine organ, and also the excellent acoustics of the church.   No two movements employed exactly the same registration.  It was suitably pictorial, and very enjoyable.  (Richard Apperley is working on a recording of Kuhnau organ works, including this one.)

Still in the same era were Dietrich Buxtehude and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.  The former’s fugue was calm and gentle, but nonetheless quite intricate.  The latter was much more grand, and with more contrasts than the Buxtehude, being in three movements, and the organist used different manuals to express the contrasts.  It was melodically interesting, and while still basically baroque, there were elements which would not have been present in his illustrious father’s compositions.

After a quiet adagio middle movement, the allegro finale was dramatic, with many flashes of brilliance.  In the main, the articulation was precise.

The second of the Kuhnau works began with a sombre opening movement having a chorale in the upper part – a version of ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’ (known in English as the Passion Chorale because it was set by J.S. Bach in St Matthew Passion.  This illustrated the opening movement: Hezekiah’s lament for the death foretold to him, and his fervent prayers.  The chorale was followed by a fully worked-out set of variations.

The second movement was entitled ‘His confidence in God’, and the third and final ‘The joy of the convalescent King’; he remembers the ills that are past; he forgets them.  These moods were fully expressed in glorious music.

The second  Buxtehude work was quite well-known, and given quite a fast performance; the Prelude and Chaconne using dramatic reed registrations – including one stop a little out-of-tune in places.

It would have been useful, as is often done for organ recitals, if the printed programme had incorporated a list of the organ specification, so that the audience, who were mainly organists or organ aficionados, could understand the instrument’s dimensions and colorations, and pick the registrations being used.  This comment applies to the following day’s programme, at Sacred Heart Cathedral, also.

Pieces by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Lemare, Bonnet, Widor and Vierne

Thomas Gaynor – Organ

Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church, Wellington

Thursday 2 September, 12.45pm

September is National Organ Month and Wellington organists have filled the first fortnight with performances on several of the city’s most interesting organs.

Though there had been a recital on Tuesday the 31st, on the organ at Old St Paul’s, a little light-weight recital by Ken MacKenzie, the month began on the remarkably good organ in what is now the Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church. The organist was Thomas Gaynor, one of the more talented students at present studying at the New Zealand School of Music where he is in the second year of a B. Mus. At 13 he was Junior Organ Scholar at the Cathedral of St Paul, and is now Richard Prothero Organ Scholar at the Cathedral. Last year he won the New Zealand Association of Organists’ competition and the intermediate section of the Sydney Organ Competition; he has toured to Europe with the cathedral choir, playing and singing at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Westminster Abbey and Saint-Eustache in Paris.

His programme opened with the first movement  from Elgar’s Organ Sonata, which I missed most of. Then I was a little disconcerted when his next piece was a famous organ lollipop by Edwin Lamare, Andantino in D flat, Op 83 No 2 (aka Moonlight and Roses, from the words later attached to it by someone else). Lemare (1866-1934) was a distinguished English organist and composer who toured widely through America, coming to New Zealand where he had a hand in designing the Auckland Town Hall organ, according to Wikipedia.

Gaynor told us the story of Lemare’s battle to get a share of the royalties from the published song which sold millions of copies, and which he eventually won. As well as making impressive demands on the organist’s technique, the piece lends itself to gross sentimentalizing, but by honestly acknowledging that, Gaynor drew out its plain musical quality, investing it with some charm.

Gaynor also drew attention to another technical quirk: a technique known as ‘thumbing down’ where the left hand plays an accompaniment on the Choir manual, while the fingers of the right hand play the tune on the Solo manual, and the thumb of the right hand simultaneously plays the tune on the Great manual, which is below the Solo manual, in parallel sixths. He thus played on three manuals at once.

We were all enthralled.

Vaughan Williams followed – one of the Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes: Rhosymedre. Though this too risks sentimental handling and he did not refrain from using heavy diapason stops, his skilled and discriminating playing made it a small piece of some consequence.

I might be revealing, again, Francophile prejudice, but I felt that the rest of the programme was what an organ recital should focus on, if it’s not to be Bach. Gaynor chose three of Franck’s pupils/successors: Widor, Vierne and Bonnet.

Bonnet’s Op 1, Variations de concert, is not a complex or particularly ambitious work; beginning with a splendidly arresting introduction on the full organ, it proceeds to lay out the tune which is followed by three pretty and well contrasted variations. The third is the show-piece, a stentorian beginning, then a spectacular solo for the pedals in which the audience’s attention was entirely on what was visible below the bench, and a peroration, again displaying pedal bravura with equally virtuosic handling of the manuals.

Widor is known mainly for one famous movement, from his Fifth Organ Symphony. Its fame is not unjustified; however, the virtues of his other music – and there’s a lot of it – are not immediate. On the one hand, it can sound facile and merely pretty; on the other hand, that superficial character works its way with you and seems misleading; unlike some music of apparent profoundity which comes to seem boring after a while, one’s respect for much of the French organ school increases with familiarity and it soon gains a special life of its own.

There’s no doubt that the organ repertoire can seem too dominated by technicalities and by organists’ skills, as distinct from musicality. Simply because of the considerable amount of knowledge that has to be mastered, of registrations, which vary from instrument to instrument, as well as the focus on technique, music-lovers from other areas often feel alien. The Andante sostenuto from Widor’s Symphonie Gothique exemplifies concern with the player’s skills, particularly in the pedal department. Gaynor succeeded in making real music of it.

Lastly, Gaynor played two of the pieces from Vierne’s collections of Pièces de fantaisie: Naïades and Carillon de Westminster. He played the first with scintillating delicacy, light-weight I suppose, but not vacuous. The Carillon finds its way into many CD organ anthologies and is certainly an entertaining and hypnotic piece, given to insistent rhythms and ostinati. It provided Thomas Gaynor with a splendid chance to demonstrate his ability to handle the instrument, and it’s an excellent instrument, with wonderful skill but to discover the real music within these attractive and flamboyant works.

Lecture-recital “Variations on J.S. Bach: The Lutheran Chorale Partita and Fresh Perspectives on the Enigma of a Musical Genius”

Nicholas Grigsby (organ)

St.  Paul’s Lutheran Church

Sunday 9 May, 5pm

Nicholas Grigsby is Director of Music at Wanganui Collegiate School, and a fine organist.  This event was obviously designed to showcase the brilliant new two-manual organ at St. Paul’s Lutheran church.  It is a small but incisive instrument.

Grigsby covered only the early years of Bach’s career, and illustrated his talk with illustrations from archives and published scores, as well as at the organ.  He stated that Bach must have taken on board many influences in his youth.  Part of a long lineage of musical Bachs, some of whom would have been important influences, he nevertheless is known to have gone to great lengths (literally) to hear noted composer-organists of his day.  Examples of some of these people’s compositions were played.

The first was by Nicolaus Bruhns, who died at about the time J.S. Bach was born. Prelude and Fugue in E minor was brilliant music.  Next was Georg Böhm’s Chorale Prelude Vater unser in Himmelreich. Not nearly as showy as the Bruhns work this was beautifully played; a delicate piece with lovely ornamentation.

Reincken, whom Bach went from Lüneburg to hear in Hamburg, was mentioned, but not played.

From Lüneburg Bach moved to Arnstadt, and from there he walked to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude play.  Archival photos showed us the Marienkirche that stood in that city (and its organs) until bombed in 1945.   Buxtehude’s Fugue à la Gigue was refreshing; as Grigsby said, “like taking a shower in the morning”.  The registration of flutes, with pedals only at the end, was delightful.  This work was followed by the same composer’s Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne, which in contrast, opened with pedals only.  Taken at a brisk pace this was a very satisfying sequence of contrasting movements.

During his brief time at Mulhausen following Arnstadt, Fugue à la Gigue, which Grigsby played next, may have been written (though Grove calls it ‘spurious’). Bach and his family then moved to Weimar.  It is possible that the Variations on ‘Sei Gegrüsset, Jesu Gütig’ were written at Weisenfels, where the Weimar court had its winter residence.  Both palaces had large and excellent organs.  Bach had time at Weimar, with a generous employer, to write a lot of music.
The Variations began solemnly, featuring good phrasing and articulation from the organist, though at the beginning the rhythm was occasionally a little wayward.  There was admirable contrast in registrations between the variations.  The full organ sound at the end made the organ sound like a much bigger instrument.

Cathedral of St Paul, Wellington, Friday 4 December 2009

This was the third year that Anglican Cathedral has presented Messiaen’s Christmas celebration on the big organ. Though it didn’t draw as big an audience as Messiah a week earlier at the other cathedral, the Happy Few enjoyed a commanding and brightly coloured account of Messiaen’s early masterpiece. It was written in the year of my birth, though I was much older that he was at its composition (28) when I first got to know Messiaen – probably over 40.

Though the organ at St Paul’s is capable of producing the characteristic sounds of the English organ, it is strong in vivid brass and treble woodwind stops, well adapted to the qualities of post-Romantic French organ music, and it was these that attracted Richard Apperley in the performance.

This characteristic was vividly heard at the start of the first piece, La vierge et l’enfant, opening with trembling, tiny, bell-like sounds, conveying the dim, cold atmosphere of the wintery manger. And Desseins éternels, with the presence of constant underpinning of deep pedal notes, Apperley again depicted a subdued feeling of awe, of the divine mystery.

It was with Le Verbe that the organ first expressed itself in bolder diapason sounds, though after a mere three minutes or so, Messiaen offers a musical version of the Word, employing the cornet stop in gentle, meandering lines, over obscure pedal harmonies. 

Apperley’s penchant for piercing treble registrations emerged again in Les Anges, culminating in an imagining of angels fluttering their wings.

From that, the ugly descent to Jésus accepte la souffrance, was a remarkable experience, with fearful, heavy pedals treading out Christ’s three burdens of suffering.  

I have been familiar with Marie-Claire Alain’s recorded performance (among others); the motion of a swaying procession of the Magi to be found in her playing makes it one of the most singular episodes; I did not feel quite that effect in Apperley’s playing. While his registrations were brighter, he nevertheless captured the sense of mystery, of being drawn towards something of which the wise men have only an uneasy premonition.

The last part, Dieu parmi nous, always seems a most remarkable creation, with its feeling of chaotic mingling of many elements, sparkling, fast-fingered joyousness, toccata-like episodes; Apperley distinguished himself here through the vivid contrasts he presented on different manuals, loud, penetrating stops riding over a subdued murmuring background, and the series of Bachian chordal passages, eventually building to a growing ecstasy with the series of teasingly unresolved chords that creates the kind of organ peroration that seems fundamental to the French school and to the French flair for dramatizing religious experiences. It was fully realized in this brilliant performance.