Broadening a harpsichordist’s horizons: East Texas Pipe Organ Festival 5 continues tradition
A stunning series of pictures by photographer David Brown provided the thematic and artistic background for the opening reception of the 2015 East Texas Pipe Organ Festival on Sunday afternoon, November 8, 2015. Brown’s new book comprising photographs of the Aeolian-Skinner organs featured at these annual East Texas celebrations was available at the gala event. Titled An American Classic: Roy Perry and the American Classic Organ, this volume is available as a print-on-demand item from www.blurb.com (www.blurb.com/b/6530916-an-american-classic).
Perry’s own organ at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore (Aeolian-Skinner’s famous Opus 1173), was the most frequently heard of the Texas treasures, utilized first in Sunday’s vibrant opening recital by Damin Spritzer (works by Benoit, Dallier, Oldroyd, Larry King, Alkan, J. S. Bach, Howells, and Spritzer’s unique specialty, multiple pieces by French-American composer René Louis Becker); continuing on Monday with a thematic program of music associated with the instrument played by festival director and current organist-choirmaster Lorenz Maycher (the finest performance I’ve heard of Sowerby’s Carillon, made unforgettable by the perfect balance of the organ’s chimes and celesta), plus Perry’s own composition Christos Patterakis and three pieces from Callahan’s Kilgore Suite, followed by Charles Callahan himself playing the first performance of his Celtic Suite: four selections commissioned by the festival in honor of this year’s honored guest, organist Albert Russell.
Also playing Opus 1173 on Monday evening, Todd Wilson gave stellar performances of Bach, Widor, and his own transcriptions of three improvisations by Gerre Hancock, culminating in a riveting performance of Reger’s Fantasia and Fugue on BACH. Wednesday began with a program by Adam Pajan, but the day’s most memorable sounds from this versatile instrument were heard by an audibly delighted capacity audience when Jelani Eddington provided his masterfully coordinated accompaniment to the silent film Hot Water, starring comic actor Harold Lloyd. Finally, Ken Cowan made magical music in Thursday’s closing concert, applying his seemingly effortless virtuosity to works by Bach, Karg-Elert, Dupré, culminating in a gripping dramatic performance of Reubke’s Sonata on the 94th Psalm.
Within easy walking distance of First Presbyterian Church, St. Luke’s United Methodist is home to Roy Perry’s smaller masterwork, Opus 1175, a two-manual instrument of 28 stops (plus four borrowed voices to flesh out the Pedal division), and with the added resource of a partially enclosed Great division. One of Maycher’s stated objectives for his fifth festival was to show the extraordinary versatility of this superbly voiced instrument and its ability to encompass the performance of large major works from the solo organ repertory. Bradley Hunter Welch’s impeccable performances of the complete Sixth Symphony of Widor and Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on BACH certainly put to rest any doubts that might have been harbored by any audience member. Additionally, Welch explored the organ’s lovely individual voices in Max Drischner’s Variations on O Run, Ye Shepherds and all six of J. S. Bach’s Schübler Chorales, cleverly dividing these beloved transcriptions into two groups of three and programming them on either side of the Liszt.
Also playing Opus 1175, young Caroline Robinson presented an eclectic program (Brahms, Vierne, Nico Muhly, Boëly, Alain, Schumann, and Howells, with Sowerby’s Requiescat in Pace sounding particularly appropriate to this instrument). Ms. Robinson was also the inspired presenter of the festival’s free outreach programs for elementary school students and was praised in the local newspaper (Kilgore News Herald, November 14) for her audience-building skills as demonstrated in the two sessions presented at St. Luke’s.
To experience the region’s other two large Aeolian-Skinner organs of national repute required travelling: on Tuesday morning, November 10, two chartered busses departed at 8:30 for a full day’s excursion to Shreveport, Louisiana. Our schedule began at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral with a 10 a.m. recital by David Baskeyfield. This unflappable young artist showcased the glories of Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1308 in the most generous acoustical environment of the churches that house these treasured instruments with a bracing program comprising works by Whitlock, Saint-Saëns, Dupré (Symphonie II), and a stirring performance of Liszt’s mighty Fantasy and Fugue on Ad nos, ad salutarum undam. After a superb lunch at Ristorante Giuseppe and an eye-opening, leg-stretching visit to the R. W. Norton Art Gallery, the refreshed group assembled at Shreveport’s First Baptist Church (another acoustically live building) to hear Charles Callahan’s demonstration of the fine Williams organ (voiced by Roy Perry), then returned to St. Mark’s for Scott Dettra’s much-anticipated program (Lemare’s organ transcription of Wagner’s Meistersinger Overture, Sowerby’s Arioso, a welcome hearing of Seth Bingham’s Passacaglia in E Minor, op. 40, and Stanford’s Fantasia and Toccata, op. 57—all dispatched with panache and musical grace). Capping the day with a buffet dinner in the uppermost reaches of Shreveport’s Artspace Gallery and a comfortable trip back to Kilgore, weary travelers either engaged in the nightly gathering at Kilgore Comfort Suites (this year titled Owls Paradise, or, in honor of honoree Russell, Al’s Paradise) or simply skittered off to get a good night’s sleep.
The second, much shorter excursion was Thursday’s trip to nearby Longview, where Monica Czausz completely captivated her audience with deftly delivered verbal program notes and supremely confident, musical playing (from memory) of Dvorák’s Carnival Overture (another Lemare-based transcription), shorter works by Bach, Widor, Alkan, and Parker, and a resounding traversal of Reger’s Chorale Fantasia on Halleluja! Gott zu loben—all thrilling on Opus 1174, the Perry-voiced organ housed front and center in the spacious contemporary architecture of First Baptist Church. After another memorable lunch at the Summit Club, Matthew Lewis played a recital of Franck, Vierne, Tournemire, Dupré, the rarely programmed Diptych of Messiaen, and a traversal, both intense and rousing, of Duruflé’s Suite, op. 5.
Evening social times, the famous “After-Glow” sessions at the Kilgore Comfort Suites Inn rounded off each music-filled day. Comfortable transportation on chartered buses also gave the occasional opportunity for such unexpected connections as that between Dallas organist Graham Clarke and Bellevue, Washington, physician Gordon Hale, who discovered their mutually similar experiences from military service during the Vietnam conflict.
ETPOF director Maycher has assembled another stellar group of artists to showcase East Texas’s treasure-trove of American Classic pipe organs for Festival Six (November 6–10, 2016). Book soon (the hotel fills quickly) and join the select 100-plus registrants who will thrill to the musical legacy of the legendary Roy Perry and his magnificently voiced East Texas wonders.
