Paul Jacobs gave a recital in the Organ Recital Series in Davies Symphony Hall today, almost exactly a year after his previous one, and in reviewing what I wrote then (here), I can say that this one was much more successful, although there were startling similarities at the very beginning and the very end.
This recital started with the Elgar Sonata in G Major, a long and multi-colored piece. There is the stately, oh-so-Brittania opening, elegant soft passages, and happily overcooked cadences, amidst orchestral textures that require an organ and an organist with great resources. Jacobs' opening was more spritely than stately, and the similarity with last year is that in such a dry acoustic as Davies, you need the lush sounds of Elgar to last longer. The triplets in the very second bar were so quick and detached that we barely had a chance to hear them before they were gone. Things warmed up, happily, after that.
Jacobs explained that the Bach Trio Sonatas, one of which followed the Elgar, were unusual compositions for the organ in giving independent lines to the right hand, the left hand, and the feet. Think of a string trio, two violins and a cello, each playing a separate line, each as difficult as the others, and nicely interwoven. Now imagine one person having to play all three such parts, and you have some idea of the complexity of the Bach Trio Sonatas for Organ. They're a delight for the audience but something of a terror for organists. Jacobs mentioned that Bach had written these pieces as instruction pieces for his son Wilhelm Friedrich, and he surmised that given the difficulty of the pieces, he must have detested his son.
Difficulties notwithstanding, Jacobs played the three-movement work with exceptional clarity. In my mind, this was the highlight of the concert. The Trio Sonatas are well known to fans of Bach organ music, but I heard new things in these old works, and that's the best part of concert-going. (If you never hear anything new, you might as well just listen to your recording at home.)
Jacobs ended the first half by returning to Elgar, playing the ultimate Elgar warhorse, Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, a "favorite" at graduation ceremonies, which is to say, hardly an actual favorite piece at all. (At a graduation ceremony I attended recently, there was no band, and they simply played a recording of this brief piece, over and over and over...) I'm not sure why Jacobs programmed it. Coming after the Bach, I thought it took us from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it provided a pre-intermission chuckle.
The second half included three rare pieces, all by women (rarer still). The Suite for Organ by Florence Price ("the first African-American woman to gain prominence as a symphonic composer," according to the program notes) was written in 1940. It contains four delightful movements, strongly reminiscent of French Romantic composers, structurally familiar (including a fughetta), but with more than a few jazzy elements. The program notes say, "The closing broaches the boundaries of Gershwin." That's one way to put it. Suffice it to say that it's easy to hear Gershwin's approach to the African-American tradition of song in this work, but perhaps only because we know Gershwin so well.
In an odd but brilliant bit of programming, Jacobs concluded the program by interleaving the final two pieces, Nadia Boulanger's Trois Pieces and three of Jeanne Demessieux' Transcendental Etudes: the first movement of the Boulanger, then the first movement of the Demmesieux, then the second Boulanger, and so on. The Boulanger pieces are slight but beautiful. Boulanger, a titan of music teaching for generations of composers, wrote very little, preferring to promote the music of her younger sister Lili, but these pieces are well worth hearing. I was especially moved by the two-part canon, and Jacobs played it with great charm and affection.
The movements of the gentle Boulanger alternated with the terrifying Etudes of Demissieux. To say that these pieces are difficult would be an understatement, and just watching Paul Jacobs manage the wild, non-stop sixteenth notes in the pedal was enough to make you stop breathing. I knew of Demessieux from her recordings of Franck, but I had no idea that this "crazy woman," as Jacobs described her, had written such brilliant tours de force. Jacobs played the opening Etude at breakneck speed, risking but averting disaster at every turn.
It is worth mentioning that Jacobs played this entire recital without a score. A half-hour Elgar piece requires an astounding memory. One might expect to memorize the Bach or the short Elgar piece, but memorizing the rare pieces of the second half would defy nearly any musician. As Jacobs mentioned in his remarks from the stage, much of the task of organ-playing is the sheer management of the overwhelming mechanical details of this most elaborate of musical instruments. This particular instrument has five manuals plus pedal, 147 ranks, and a dazzling array of couplers, which link the divisions of the organ, and pistons, which turn on and off arbitrary sets of stops. Organs vary from hall to hall. Jacobs spent many hours programming the instrument for a two-hour recital, and yet he navigated his way through the hundreds of changes as if it were his home instrument. We heard one recital on this series last year, by an organist with a typically impressive biography, who had not done her homework. She had two basic settings, loud and soft, and her technique was only so-so, resulting in a performance totally lacking in nuance and color. In the hands of a master like Paul Jacobs, the Rufatti organ in Davies can do amazing things.
In a bizarre twist, Jacobs played the exact same encore as he did last year, the A Minor Fugue, BWV 543, and unfortunately, it was played in the same way: with increasing speed and volume, resulting in cacophony. As I wrote last year, he should leave that approach to Bach to Cameron Carpenter. But apart from that one unhappy moment, this was a brilliant recital, and I hope Paul Jacobs returns every year.
