It is almost certainly unprecedented for a front-page feature article on the pipe organ to appear in a major city newspaper on the opening day of an organ festival and competition in that very city. The Hartford Courant, however, did just that on Saturday, September 21, 2024, the start of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival Hartford (ASOFH). Festival artistic director Christopher Houlihan and four of his Trinity College students were pictured with Trinity’s magnificent Austin organ in an article including interviews with those students. What better way to lead into what was to be a memorable weekend of music making on that instrument.
The celebration began Saturday morning with recitals by each of three young professional competition finalists chosen from a preliminary round of auditions. Each organist was required to present a forty-five- to fifty-minute recital including one of the Bach trio sonatas, one of the three Franck chorals, a work by a woman or BIPOC composer, as well as music of the young artist’s own choosing. The Franck requirement in particular was in homage to the festival’s namesake who frequently championed these works.
Bethany Dame, a graduate student at Peabody Conservatory and organ scholar at the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore, Maryland, led off the competition with a recital including the Bach Sonata in E-flat Major, BWV 525, the Franck Choral Number 3 in A Minor, and In Paradisum by contemporary British organist and composer Ghislaine Reece-Trapp. The latter is an evocative piece weaving a colorful tapestry of sound around the Gregorian chant melody from the Burial Office. Her program opened with Simon Preston’s Alleluyas and concluded with two works of Louis Vierne, “Clair de Lune” and “Toccata” from 24 Pièces de fantaisie, Deuxième suite, opus 53, numbers 5 and 6, respectively.
Nathan Ringkamp, also a graduate student at Peabody Conservatory and an assisting organist at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., presented the second recital of the morning. The Sonata in E-flat Major of Bach and the Franck Choral Number 1 in E Major were preceded by “Verdun: Centre Mondial de la Paix” from Four Pilgrimages in Lorrain, opus 30, by the late French-Canadian composer and organist, Rachel Laurin. Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain, opus 7, by Maurice Duruflé, rounded out his program.
After a lunch break in the cloister of Trinity Chapel, Juilliard senior, student of Paul Jacobs, and organ scholar at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Jacob Gruss completed the competition with a recital that also featured the Bach Sonata in E-flat Major and the Franck Choral in A Minor. British composer Judith Bingham’s St. Bride, Assisted by Angels fulfilled the other requirement. Bingham’s rich and unique harmonic style is almost instantly recognizable to anyone acquainted with her ample catalog of organ and choral works. The recital began with the forceful and virtuosic “Choral-Improvisation sur le Victimae Paschali Laudes” from Cinq Improvisations by Charles Tournemire as transcribed by Maurice Duruflé.
The recitals were adjudicated by a distinguished jury. David Hurd, performing artist, composer, and longtime professor at General Theological Seminary is currently organist and choirmaster of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City. Kimberly Marshall, award-winning recitalist and teacher, is organ professor at Arizona State University. James O’Donnell is currently professor in the practice of organ and sacred music at the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music after an illustrious career as organist and music director first at Westminster Cathedral and then at Westminster Abbey. In the latter capacity he directed music for the coronation of King Charles III.
The David C. Spicer First Prize of $15,000 and a solo recital at the 2025 ASOFH was awarded to Jacob Gruss. He also received the $2,000 prize decided by paper ballot cast by members of the competition audience. Beginning this year, the first prize has been named after David C. Spicer, organist and co-founder of the Schweitzer Festival.
Nathan Ringkamp received the second prize of $7,500, and Bethany Dame received third prize of $3,500. All three of this year’s highly accomplished organ finalists provided convincing evidence of a healthy future for organ performance and study in our nation’s schools, concert halls, and worship venues.
On Saturday evening a capacity audience filled the college chapel for the festival concert. The Hartford Symphony strings conducted by music director Carolyn Kuan opened the concert with Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. The chapel acoustic proved ideal for the richly varying textures of the work, which range from violin and viola solos to surging multi-part divisis.
Jacob Gruss’s masterful reprise of the Tournemire “Choral-Improvisation on Victimae Paschali Laudes” differed from his competition performance by the festive addition of the Trompette de Jubilé stop at the triumphal close of the work.
The orchestra was then joined by Christopher Houlihan for a performance of Howard Hanson’s lyrical and harmonically colorful Concerto for Organ, Harp and Strings. This rarely heard work is a 1941 revision of the earlier Concerto for Organ and Large Orchestra, dating from 1926. The original was premiered in 1927 by the head of the Eastman School of Music organ department Harold Gleason, familiar to organists for his famous pedagogical work, Method of Organ Playing. Gleason was also the dedicatee of the concerto. The conductor for that occasion was the composer, also director of the Eastman School. In this performance, single lyrical organ lines often kept one guessing as to whether the organ or a solo orchestral instrument was being heard. The astonishing pedal cadenza, however, left no doubt as to the concertato role of the organ.
Following intermission, Kuan, Houlihan, and the orchestra concluded the concert with the Symphony Number 1 for Organ and Orchestra by Alexandre Guilmant. This three-movement work is an orchestrated revision of the composer’s Sonata Number 1 for organ and affords ample opportunity for brilliant playing by both soloist and orchestra. Nestled between the intense contrapuntal first movement and the at-times thunderous finale lay the gentle, lyrical and unpretentious “Pastorale,” a welcome contrast of mood and a chance to savor the pure dolce of the Austin’s Flûte Harmonique. The toccata-like “Final” provided a suitably climactic conclusion to the concert. Soloist, conductor, and orchestra truly brought out the best in this diverse and satisfying masterpiece. As an encore, Christopher Houlihan dazzled with a dramatic reading of the Vierne “Toccata.”
On Sunday afternoon an equally large audience turned out for a repeat of the concert. Prior to both concerts, talks moderated by Leslie Desmangles, Professor Emeritus of religious and international studies at Trinity and member of the festival’s board of directors, delved into the influence of Albert Schweitzer’s life and legacy on the festival as well as the relationship of the organ to its venue and the orchestra. Kuan, Houlihan, and Professor Sean Duffy of Quinnipiac University and director of its Albert Schweitzer Institute, took part in the lively discussion. Also of interest to the attendees was a display of memorabilia including the portable pump organ that belonged to Schweitzer and many volumes from his personal library. Festival board of directors president Robert Bausmith demonstrated the organ with a verse of Bach’s harmonization of the chorale “Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe,” commonly known as “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
As a celebration of the inspiration of Schweitzer, the richness of the solo and solo/orchestral repertoire of the organ as well as a vision of the future of organ playing in the hands of excellent young professionals, this year’s festival was a complete package. May the
tradition continue.
