ClevelandClassical
011111MorrisonRev
Review
Alan Morrison plays elegant organ recital at First Baptist (January 9)
by Timothy Robson
Alan Morrison, Head of the Organ Department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, played an elegant recital on Sunday afternoon, January 9, at First Baptist Church of Great Cleveland. His technical facility is astonishing; where most organists might leave their "big piece" for the end of the concert, Mr. Morrison started with one of the biggest in the organ repertoire, Marcel Dupré's Prelude and Fugue in B Major, Op. 7, No. 1, and moved on from there. It was a program of showstoppers. Mr. Morrison played to his virtuosic strength in music from the French Romantic tradition on the first half of his program; the second half was devoted to American composers, including a jazzy toccata by Cleveland organist/composer Anne Wilson. Mr. Morrison took full advantage of the church's large Southfield/Schlicker organ. He had a special fondness for the very low-sounding 32-foot foundation stop, whose velvety smoothness is felt more than heard. The Dupré prelude and fugue are notoriously difficult, with repeated big chords and the widely-spaced intervals of the fugue. Mr. Morrison was up to the challenge. The "sunny" key of B major was a fitting accompaniment to the bright, cold Cleveland day outside.
Maurice Duruflé's Scherzo was once described by British organist Dame Gillian Weir as being like French champagne, light and bubbly. It has throughout the influence of Debussy and Gregorian chant, which later came to full bloom in Duruflé's famous Requiem. The arabesque-like figurations of this brief work also owe a debt to Duruflé's teacher, Charles Tournemire. Mr. Morrison's registrations for the work were not altogether convincing, with some balance issues between the contrasting voices. The melodic elements sometimes overshadowed the accompanying figurations. The piece has a serene ending, with the addition of the 32-foot stop.
Mr. Morrison's performance of Charles-Marie Widor's Andante sostenuto, from Symphonie Gothique, op. 70, was otherworldly. In his spoken commentary, he described his performance of this movement at the memorial service for Fred Rogers (of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood fame). He invited each audience member to meditate on a person of importance to him or her during the playing of this slow movement. A huge flute melody was pitted against gently rocking chords on string sounds. The second section of the piece features the melody in the pedal, with a more complex manual accompaniment. The third, closing section has a return to the opening registration, with the flute melody and countermelody in the right foot of the pedal, while the left foot of the pedal plays a long-held "pedal point." Mr. Morrison created an atmosphere of such rapt attention that no one broke the mood for applause at the end of the Widor movement, and Mr. Morrison proceeded directly to the next work, César Franck's Fantasy in A Major.
The Fantasy is unjustifiably one of Franck's lesser-known works, which is unfortunate, because it is full of melodic invention, harmonic adventure and exploration of some of the more exotic sounds of the organ, including extensive use of the vox humana stop, which, in combination with the tremolo effect of the organ was thought to mimic the human singing voice. The work has several themes that are presented in various guises and then combined at the climax of the piece, which then ends quietly, on the gurgling vox humana. Franck composed pieces such as this with the aim of showing off the capabilities of the new organs designed and constructed by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who came to fame in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by building most of the important organs in Paris and elsewhere in France. In the context of its musical era, Franck’s Fantasy was an adventurous, almost shocking use of sound and harmony. The work is highly sectional, which makes it very hard to hold together musically. Mr. Morrison played it with great skill and technical perfection, with each section phrased beautifully. What I missed was an overall sense of the fantasy and daring that Franck would have communicated to his nineteenth-century listeners.
Mr. Morrison closed the first half of the program with Henri Mulet's great toccata Tu es petra, from his organ suite Byzantine Sketches. Henri Mulet, who was born in 1878 but did not die until 1967, was the last gasp of the great nineteenth-century organist/composer tradition, composing in an old-fashioned style at the same time that Messiaen, Langlais and other composers had moved into more advanced musical territory. The complete title of this movement is Tu es petra et portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus te ("You are Peter and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against you") a quotation from the Gospel when Jesus renames the disciple Simon to be Peter, who, according to tradition, became the Bishop of Rome and founder of what is now the Roman Catholic Church. Mulet's Byzantine Sketches are tone poems depicting the architecture of the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre in Paris. The Toccata has the standard format of a French organ toccata: rapidly alternating chords in the hands and a broad melody in the pedal; the thematic material is developed, with a grand return of the pedal melody for a big climax. Warhorse it may be, but it was thrilling in Mr. Morrison's peformance.
After intermission, Mr. Morrison played Anne Wilson's Toccata, which was premiered in Cleveland in 2003 at the American Guild of Organists regional convention by Tom Trenney, a northeast Ohio local who has gone on to big things in the organ world. The Toccata is very difficult, with rapid changes from manual to manual, and massive chords featuring big changes in dynamics. It is a tour de force, but because of its difficulty will probably never get the performances it deserves.
Two delightful short movements from Harold Stover's Mountain Music were sonic relief after all the huge pieces on the program. Both are based on Shaker tunes; the first, "At Evening", quiet; the second, "Quick Dance", a barn dance hoedown in which you can hear the fiddles, and which eventually fades off into the distance on very high, quiet flute stops. The style is "Copland-esque" in the elder composer's "Americana" phase, although perhaps not as diatonic as Copland's music, but with a more free-floating tonality that one might associate with Roy Harris.
Mr. Morrison completed his recital with Leo Sowerby's pedaling showpiece, Pageant. Sowerby pulls out all the tricks in the organist's bag to show off the technical skill of the performer, including scales, arpeggios and chords, all done by the performer's two feet. There are parts for the hands, but they pale in comparison to what's going on in the pedals. Musically, it's not much of a piece; it is all about displaying technique. One can only have slack-jawed admiration for Mr. Morrison's performance. It is hard to imagine very many organists with the musical skills and showmanship to carry it off the way he did, making it sound easy with each more astonishingly difficult feat (or would that be feet?). He earned the standing ovation he received at the end of the concert.
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