Organ festival united by diversity
Weekend concerts offer traditional, contemporary
The thing about triennial events is that they happen only once every three years. That is why the Canadian International Organ Competition has organized a weekend festival, Rendez-vous des Grands, to remind Montrealers that organ playing is a non-stop enterprise.
“The idea behind the program planning is to show the organ in as many different facets as possible,” says founding artistic director John Grew. We hear the instrument as a solo vehicle, as the binding element of a chamber ensemble, as a substitute orchestra and as an advocate of contemporary music.
Opening Friday at 7:30 p.m. on the venerable Casavant organ of Notre Dame Basilica, the weekend does not confine itself to CIOC laureates. That first concert brings together Harvard associate university choirmaster and organist Christian Lane (CIOC winner in 2011) with the U.S.based British organist David Baskeyfield (2011 winner of the St. Albans International Organ Festival) and the Austrian Michael Schöch (a 2011 winner of the ARD International Music Competition in Munich).
Works by Widor, Vierne and their compatriots and contemporaries dominate the playlist for this triple bill. Whatever the public at large might think of French late romantics, they are the composers of the first rank as far as organists are concerned.
Curiously, there is no bar- oque music during the weekend, but we get a classical outing Saturday at 5 p.m. as Jean-Willy Kunz of France (CIOC third prize in 2011) joins three period performers in Mozart’s seldom-heard Church Sonatas on the Hellmuth Wolff chamber organ of Bourgie Hall in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Sunday at 4 p.m., Jonathan Oldengarm is at the mighty Casavant of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul for a performance of Duruflé’s once-ubiquitous Requiem. Jordan de Souza conducts the A&P choir and mezzo-soprano Renée Lapointe supplies the solos. Oldengarm will also play transcriptions of Wagner (Die Meistersinger and Lohengrin Preludes) and Debussy (Fêtes from Nocturnes). The last is his own handiwork.
“Debussy’s l ush orchestration translates well to the richly appointed instrument at St. Andrew and St. Paul,” Oldengarm says. “Playing the transcription feels a bit like playing a Chopin étude with one hand and two feet while conducting the Debussy with the other.”
Finally, Hans-Ola Ericsson, the new university organist at McGill, plays a program of his own compositions on the bright French classical organ of Redpath Hall, another Wolff instrument, Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Ericsson, a Swede, is noted for having recorded the complete works of Messiaen, but is also busy recording Bach on the historical organs of Scandinavia.
“I have a theory that artists who know and understand history are not afraid of the future,” says Grew, himself a former university organist at McGill.
Ericsson’s music in places calls for electronics and a baroque piccolo. The titles — Melody to the Memory of a Lost Friend XIII, Vocalise from Höga Visan (Song of Songs), The Four Beasts’ Amen — attest to his theological interests. The Melody to the Memory of a Lost Friend XIII was inspired in part by a close encounter with Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych Ascension to Heaven.
“Thanks to a friend of (the Italian avant-garde com- poser) Luigi Nono, I was allowed to be locked in with (this painting) for a morning in the spring of 1984,” Ericsson explains in the program notes. “The painting was being restored in an out-of-theway room in the Ducal Palace in Venice and was not accessible to the public.
“In this painting, Hieronymus Bosch shows the tunnel that many people have described in near-death experiences. A divine revelation.”
The CIOC was also involved by implication in the recent inauguration of the restored organ of St. Joseph’s Oratory. The recitalist on Oct. 7 was Frédéric Champion, who won the initial CIOC in 2008.
“He is a good example of the new breed of young organists playing early repertoire and contemporary repertoire with great flair and conviction and then playing his own transcription of Liszt,” Grew says of this Frenchman. “Quite amazing.”
Tickets to all concerts cost $20. For more details on Rendez-vous des Grands, visit www.ciocm.org.