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Church of St. John the Divine
July 19, 2010
It is as well that the roof of the Church of St. John the Divine is solidly constructed; had it collapsed during the course of Monday's recital by Paul Jacobs it would have robbed not only the Juilliard School of the chairman of its organ department, it would also have left cathedrals and churches across Canada sadly bereft of organists.
Monday's programme was one of the events accompanying "Pipes Around the Pacific", this year's Festival/Conference of the Royal Canadian College of Organists and there were moments when I suspected I was the only person in the near-capacity audience who was not an organist (although, believe me, I did try during my wild youth).
In a sense, then, Jacobs was preaching to the converted, which was something of a pity, as I imagine that the average music-lover would have become an instant organophile (if there is such a word) after hearing his playing, some of the finest I have ever heard.
The highlight of the programme was surely the final, and longest, work: Liszt's Fantasy and Fugue on "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam", based on a chorale theme from Meyerbeer's Le Prophète and composed around 1850.
As with his sonata for piano from 1852-3 - and there were passages in the fantasy which distinctly reminded me of that work - "Ad nos" is an extended sonata form, with a dramatic opening, adagio "development" and the fugue serving both as finale and recapitulation and coda.
Paul Jacobs gave this too-seldom-heard masterpiece a dazzling performance, from the dramatic opening, with the theme played on the pedals, to the monumental close of the fugue.
While claiming no expertise on the matter whatsoever, it seemed to me that Jacobs's choice of registration was as infallible as his tempos or his fingers and feet (which, thanks to the large screen TV, the entire audience could see).
And, although I cannot say exactly what the score specifies at these points, there were three occasions during the adagio section in which the sound of a bell rang out pure and clean (what, precisely, is this stopped called? I wondered).
The Liszt formed the second "half" of Jacobs's recital; in the first we heard music by Mendelssohn, Boulanger and Franck.
Felix Mendelssohn almost certainly holds the record for the most frequently performed music on the organ - I phrase it like that because, of course, the Wedding March was originally written for orchestra.
Mendelssohn's six sonatas for organ, Op.65 (not strictly speaking sonatas) were composed in 1844-5, in response to a request from an English publisher while Mendelssohn was on one of his several tours of that country.
In a change to the advertised programme (which was scheduled to begin with a sonata by Max Reger) Jacobs began Monday's recital with a performance of Mendelssohn's Sonata No.1 in F minor.
Or, to be pedantically exact, it began with the first few bars of the Mendelssohn, whose bold drama was soon undermined by a gradual enfeeblement of the sound and sagging intonation as (apparently) the blower went on strike.
Of course, if you are going to have technical problems with the instrument this was undoubtedly the right audience; one hurried consultation and mysterious technical corrections later, Jacobs resumed for "take two", as he announced it. From this point on the instrument clearly realised that with this player and this audience recalcitrance had no place.
Jacobs displayed some amazing footwork in the opening movement, whereas the second was all delicacy and lightness of touch, almost a Song without Words. The finale grew in complexity and volume to its final grand peroration.
Nadia Boulanger was a great teacher of composition, but her own music, of which there is a reasonable amount, is little known.
All the more reason to celebrate Jacobs's performance of her Prelude in F minor, a short, delicate and wistful piece which left one wanting more.
César Franck's Final in B flat, Op.21 is the last of his six pieces published (rather oddly) as Opp.16-21, which Liszt rated very highly indeed.
For much of the piece the pedals have the theme and alternative with decorative passages on the manuals, before a more contemplative passage leads to the big finish in which hands and feet combine (or, as Alkan might have put it, les deux mains et les deux pieds réunies).
As with every piece on his programme, Jacobs's playing led one to the conclusion that there simply was no other way to play it.
All in all this was a simply stunning evening's music. While no organophile myself, I was gripped from the first note to the last by Jacobs's prodigious technique and musical sensibility.
My only regret is that programme change: I really wanted to hear the Reger.
But one cannot have everything in this life and, even shorn of Max's sonata, this recital was so much more than half a loaf.
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