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Christ Church Cathedral
June 29, 2012
When, many years ago, I was first learning to drive and there still plenty of vehicles on the road without synchromesh gearboxes, older friends would attempt to frighten me with talks of "double declutching" via the "heel and toe manoeuvre". Talk designed to strike terror in the hearts of the average person.
But not the average organist, for whom the heel-and-toe must seem like child's play - involving, as it does, only the one foot and no hands.
Not that Wesley Hall, who put Christ Church Cathedral's magnificent Wolff organ through its paces on Friday night, is anything like an average organist.
Hall's recital was, both actually and metaphorically, divided into two parts. In the first, we heard music from the late-17th and early-18th centuries. In the second, music from the late-19th and the early(ish) 20th.
One of the more obvious features of this more-or-less chronological approach, was the increasing use of the feet, of which more later.
Nicolas de Grigny left a single volume of music for the organ, of which only the second edition was known until, in 1949, a copy of the first was discovered in Paris in the Bibliothèque national. His setting of the hymn Veni Creator, in a change of programme, opened Friday's recital.
While one imagine that the opportunities for displaying the Wolff's tonal variety might be few in such relatively early music (the first edition of de Grigny's Premier livre d'orgue dates from 1699) Hall confounded any such presumption. The first and last versets (the dictionary defines this as "a brief piece for pipe organ, formerly used as part of the music for the Catholic Mass") were stately and grand, the second and third provided plenty of imitation without, ever, quite becoming fugal, although Hall certainly imbued the latter with plenty of life; the fourth featured the fascinating tones of what I was assured is a crumhorn stop (the crumhorn, at least sonically, resembles nothing so much as a medieval kazoo).
Nicholas Bruhns was a pupil of the great Dietrich Buxtehude - indeed Buxtehude considered Bruhns to be his best pupil. His untimely death at the age of thirty-one meant that his musical legacy is small, including just five works for organ.
Hall's performance of Bruhns' chorale fantasy on "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland" followed the de Grigny, even though it is slightly the earlier work (Bruhns died in 1697). From its relatively subdued opening the music gradually increased in complexity and power - the latter assisted greatly by Hall's excellent choice of registration. It was also noticeable that his feet had considerably more to do.
But if you wish to lay the credit (or blame) for the true emancipation of the organist's feet, it seems fairly safe to lay it at the door of Johann Sebastian Bach.
From the first bars of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548 - known as the "wedge", because of the widening intervals of the fugue subject - one thing was very clear: de Grigny and Bruhns were doubtless very talented composers, but when we come to Bach we are dealing with one of the greatest music minds in history - perhaps the very greatest.
Hall delivered a superb, magisterial performance. Bach takes full advantage of the potential of the instrument - the video screen enabled the audience, perhaps for the first time, to appreciate just how involved all four limbs of the player are - and Hall did likewise.
No doubt for many non-organophiles this is their idea of what an organ recital should sound like. And with such excellent playing of such ineffably great music on such a superb instrument, who would demur? Not I.
Another programme change - and I did so much want to hear the scheduled Messiaen - meant that the recital's second half featured two composers whose reputations both tend to feature the words "academic" and "dry".
And yet, the more I hear of the music of Paul Hindemith and Max Reger, the more I realise what a dreadful calumny this is on both men.
Hindemith's Organ Sonata No.2 (of three) was composed in 1937, hardly the happiest period of its composer's life: in 1934 he had been denounced as an "atonal noisemaker" by Goebbels and subsequently his opera Mathis de Maler was banned by the Nazi regime. In 1938 he - and his part-Jewish wife - fled to Switzerland.
You would, though, search in vain for any real indication of this in the second organ sonata, which proved to be a most enjoyable work, with a lively, "neo-classical" opening movement - for which Hall employed a wonderfully interesting variety of registrations - a charming second movement and a final fugue on a slightly angular subject, which ended in a surprisingly subdued manner - perhaps the only "sign of the times" in the entire work.
After which, I can only say that I would be far from averse to hearing Hindemith's two other organ sonatas - especially if played by Hall.
Apart from their generally dismal reputations (outside the German-speaking word, at any rate) one other thing that Hindemith and Reger had in common was the unstinted admiration of the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Both were regularly featured in the programmes of the Society for Private Musical Performances, Reger more than any other composer.
Reger's Fantasia and Fugue on "Wie Schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern" provided a suitably massive close to a most impressive evening's music-making.
Again Hall displayed a fine sense of pacing and tremendous control. In his hand Reger's harmonic language is indeed dense, but never "thick", at least not in the pejorative sense in which it is usually applied.
The music built inevitably to a huge, all-encompassing torrent of sound - listening to the Wolff at full stretch really is a physical, as well as musical, experience.
Although hardly an organ aficionado, I "know what I like" and this was a wonderully rewarding evening - and not just for organists.
Oh yes, in case you are wondering, "a confounded box of whistles" was Christopher Wren's description of the organ in St. Paul's Cathedral.
Well, it takes all sorts.
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