United States Varied, ‘A Keyboard Extravaganza for Organs and Piano’: David Briggs, Jeremy Filsell, Wayne Marshall (organ / piano). Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, New York, 27.1.2024. (RP)
Jean Langlais – ‘Esquisse Gothique’ No.1 (‘Veni Creator’)
Mozart – Fantasia in F minor, KV 594
Rachmaninoff – ‘How Pretty’, Op.21 No.7 (transcr. Filsell); ‘Spring Waters’, Op.14 No.11 (transcr. Francis Pott)
Pierre Cochereau – ‘Toccata’ (from Symphonie Improvisée, Boston 1956) (transcr. Filsell); ‘Berceuse à la mémoire de Louis Vierne’ (transcr. Briggs)
David Briggs – Boléro for Two Organs and Piano (world premiere)
Jehan Alain – ‘Litanies’, JA 119
Wayne Marshall – ‘Berceuse’
Bach – Improvisations on Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
Concert events at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue usually function its famend refrain of males and boys, however this was a celebration of its magnificent organs and a Steinway live performance grand piano of spectacular pedigree. Jeremy Filsell, Organist and Choirmaster at St. Thomas was joined by two equally achieved colleagues, David Briggs and Wayne Marshall, in what was aptly billed as a ‘Keyboard Extravaganza’.
Briggs, at present Artist in Residence on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, recalled first assembly Filsell as a boy at Coventry Cathedral in England. He reminisced in regards to the final time they carried out collectively some 25 years in the past on adjoining pontoon boats on a lake on the Lahti Worldwide Organ Competition. They wanted to don sun shades – the solar was nonetheless shining brightly at 9 on that summer time night – and the blast of a passing ferry’s horn added a nautical ambiance to the occasion.
Marshall is equally well-known as a conductor, organist and pianist, and performs in church buildings and in live performance halls. Briggs remembered encountering Marshall at King’s Faculty, Cambridge, after they have been about eighteen. Marshall’s virtuosity was readily obvious, and the younger Briggs was astonished at how briskly he might play.
St. Thomas’s foremost instrument is the Miller-Scott Organ, constructed by the Dobson Organ Firm, which was devoted in 2018. It has 7,069 pipes over six divisions and 102 stops, and was conceived by John Scott, the church’s former Organist and Director of Music, who died all of the sudden in 2015. Scott envisioned it as being appropriate for your entire vary of music from Baroque to Trendy, and this live performance put its versatility to the check.
Within the rear of the church is the Loening-Hancock Gallery Organ with its gilded oak case and beautiful cobalt-blue doorways. In-built 1996 by Taylor & Boody, it was enhanced in 2015 to its present state with three manuals, 31 stops and 44 ranks. Devoted to the late Gerre Hancock in honor of his 25 years of service to the church as organist and choirmaster, the instrument was impressed by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century organs within the Netherlands and Northern Germany. Its authenticity extends to a few massive bellows that may be operated by foot.
In 2021, St. Thomas was given a Steinway & Sons full-concert grand piano that had been the private instrument of Eugene Istomin, the late American pianist. Its prior house owners, California vintners Mark Nelson and Dana Johnson, wished to discover a place that will each treasure and use the instrument. St. Thomas was their selection, and Filsell displayed its distinctive tonal qualities in transcriptions of two Rachmaninoff songs.
The live performance opened with a two-organ model of Jean Langlais’s ‘Esquisse Gothique’ No.1. Briggs, who studied with Langlais, was seated at one of many church’s newest acquisitions, the Karl and Barbara Saunders Organ Console (the unique keydesk of the Miller-Scott, lately transformed to a cellular one). It’s instantly in entrance of the chancel, and Marshall was perched excessive above within the rear of the church. The distinct sounds of the 2 devices captured the tonal contrasts of the work, with the tinkling sounds of rear organ’s Zimbelstern heard within the wonderful closing measures.
The Loening-Hancock was heard within the repertoire for which it was meant, with Briggs enjoying Mozart’s F minor Fantasia. The work was meant for a mechanical organ clock within the mausoleum of an Austrian subject marshal. In Briggs’s interpretation, the elegiac temper of the work yielded to glitter and precision.4
The live performance additionally noticed the world premiere of Briggs’s Boléro for Two Organs and Piano. Briggs stated that he composed it in about two days with a lot of the work completed in London Heathrow’s Admirals Membership or in Seat 17A on the next flight to New York’s JFK Airport. It’s Briggs’s first work to make the most of twelve-tone strategies. The sequence that he devised makes use of each half-step interval in an octave, and it’s heard in its entirety in a solo clarinet cease at first of the work.
Briggs discovered fame early in his profession with transcriptions of recordings of improvisations by Pierre Cochereau, who was titular organist of Notre-Dame de Paris from 1955 till his demise in 1984. Filsell has additionally transcribed the French organist’s improvisations, and Marshall gave a rhythmically charged and joyous efficiency of Cochereau’s Toccata from his Symphonie Improvisée, which the French organist recorded reside in Boston’s Symphony Corridor in 1956. Way more soothing and melodic was Briggs’s enjoying of his personal transcription of ‘Berceuse à la mémoire de Louis Vierne’, with significantly pretty melodies sounding within the solo flute cease.
Filsell explored the tonal glories of the Miller-Scott Organ in Jehan Alain’s ‘Litanies’. Alain, who was killed in motion within the closing days of World Struggle II, wrote that an organist should overwhelm within the piece, yielding solely to the passionate emotion of the work. Filsell appeared buoyed by the wonderful sounds that he drew from the organ, and the listener was left exhilarated by the expertise.
After the Alain, to ‘calm issues down a bit’, Marshall performed his ‘Berceuse’, which began out as an improvisation that he did at England’s York Minster. The work was jazzy however mild, and revealed the inviting, lush sounds to be drawn from the Miller-Scott Organ.
This excellent live performance ended with Filsell on the piano, Marshall on the principle organ and Briggs within the gallery improvising on Bach’s ever-popular Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It was three colleagues and associates on the high of their type displaying their virtuosity and showmanship.
St. Thomas Church had promised a musical extravaganza, and these three very good organists delivered one.
Rick Perdian
Featured Picture: Jeremy Fiilsell on the Loening-Hancock Gallery Organ © St. Thomas Fifth Avenue
