Cameron Carpenter, Davies Symphony Hall, March 10, 2013

Cameron Carpenter’s concerts are always a surprise, but never more so than when the program says, “Cameron Carpenter will announce the first half of his program from the stage” and the second half lists only pieces that have never been performed in the US before. (And he added a post-intermission encore to that.)

He began the concert by walking on stage and, without saying a word, launching into the Prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G Major for Unaccompanied Cello, played on the pedals alone. This was not simply an impossibly difficult solo for pedals; for this piece, he redefined “fleet of foot.” The opening line is an arpeggio in three voices. Take a look at the first three notes: a low G, a D four notes above that, and a B five notes above that:

Now consider how you would play those distantly separated notes with two feet! Then add the other notes, and keep a brisk tempo. Impossible.

After finishing the Prelude, he proceeded to play it again, this time “accompanying” the unaccompanied piece with a full-on Fantasia.

He then spoke of the recent sad loss of the San Francisco Symphony’s principal oboist, William Bennett, in whose memory he then played one of Bach’s Leipzig Chorales, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, which features a solo line that he played on the organ’s oboe stop. This was a “straight” performance, note-wise, but exceptionally free and beautifully ornamented, as an oboe player might play it. It was very moving.

This was followed immediately by a ferocious Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor (BWV 542). Completely over the top, as one expects from Carpenter. My favorite moment was in the pedal at measure 31 of the Fantasia, where Bach writes a line that descends – logically – four octaves. Of course, there aren’t that many octaves in the pedal, which contains only 32 keys, so in the written score, you play one octave and then start over again from the top. But for a given key on the organ, you can use a stop that plays the pitch for that key (a so-called 8-foot stop), or the pitch one octave higher (4’), one octave lower (16’), or two octaves lower (32’). So by starting with just 4’ stops and then adding gradually adding 8’, 16’, and 32’ stops, Carpenter produced a 4-octave descent! It makes perfect sense. I doubt that he was the first organist to do this, but it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it done, and I’ve known this piece since I was a teenager.

Carpenter did introduce the next two pieces on the program, the Chorale No. 3 in B Minor by César Franck, and the Variations on a Noel by Marcel Dupré, which Carpenter described as a “fashion show,” which was both funny and apt.

This was a revelation for me. We’ve all become accustomed to organists’ taking certain liberties with the registration, if not the notes, of Bach’s organ music, since Bach rarely wrote what stops he expected the organist to use, although every organist knows standard registrations.

But for French Romantic organ music, we have much more specific information. Franck and Dupré wrote registration-indications in the score, and the instruments for which these pieces were written are still in use today. We have recordings of Marcel Dupré, and some of us, myself included, were privileged enough to hear Dupré play in person. We know the churches, we know the acoustics, we know “how they’re supposed to be played.”

But Carpenter, succeeding in his grand quest to make us all re-think this instrument and this music, did not follow these traditional registrations. Instead, he picked new sounds, appropriate to Davies Hall and to the Ruffatti organ, and surprised many of us. I’ve heard these pieces played countless times; this was not better or worse; it was new, different, and delightful. It reminded me of a performance I saw, years ago, of The Tempest at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in which Prospero was Miranda’s mother. It changed everything, and I’ll never think of that play again without remembering that performance. Carpenter’s performance was like that.

After intermission, we were expecting five pieces from Carpenter’s work in progress, Science Fiction Scenes, but he started, again without commentary, by playing The Academic Festival Overture by Brahms, as a sort of mid-concert encore. The five Scenes that followed have been performed only once before, in Berlin. There were interesting themes in the first and fifth scenes, and a perpetual-motion figure in the pedal of the third movement. The rest I didn’t find very interesting as compositions. The program notes say, “Carpenter draws on the vast emotional array not only of science fiction itself, but also of the concept of large-scale epic music as essential to the cinematic science fiction experience.” OK, if you say so. I heard harmonic wisps of show tunes, which was jarring in a performance by the hard-edged Carpenter. But these are new pieces, and perhaps this is what the Scenes are about. Time will tell.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Cameron Carpenter is one of the greatest organists I’ve ever heard, and I’ve sat on the bench next to Marcel Dupré.