Haarlem Organ Improvisation Competition

In the second half of July, leading figures from the international organ world gathered again in Haarlem, the Netherlands, for the 49th edition of the Haarlem International Organ Festival

Stephen Taylor was a chorister at Bristol Cathedral and organ scholar of Jesus College, Oxford. In the Netherlands he studied with Ewald Kooiman, Nico van den Hooven, and Jan Welmers, and was awarded the Prix d’Excellence in 1977. He was organist of the Nicolaïkerk in Utrecht for more than twenty years and is active as a soloist and continuo player and as an author and translator. Taylor joined the Haarlem Festival organization in 2007. His translation of Ton de Leeuw’s Music of the Twentieth Century was published by Amsterdam University Press. In 2006 he was awarded the St. Martin Medal of the city of Utrecht for his contribution to its cultural life. His three-volume tutor on practical harmonization, The Lost Chord, has recently been published for the first time in English.

In the second half of July, leading figures from the international organ world gathered again in Haarlem, the Netherlands, for the 49th edition of the Haarlem International Organ Festival. It was here, in this wonderfully picturesque town very near Amsterdam, that the first Haarlem improvisation competition was held in 1951. Four years later, in 1955, the summer academy was launched, and the two events were held annually until 1986, and thereafter biennially. 

Improvisation competition

The competition is unique in its focus on contemporary improvisation. In each round, after an hour’s preparation with pencil and paper only, competitors offer a 10-minute concert improvisation. Eight participants from France, Poland, the USA (Jason Roberts, Connecticut), and Holland were selected in the spring of 2012 by means of submitted recorded improvisations on short motifs by Louis Maillié (Lyon and Paris). In the first two rounds, all eight selected competitors showed their skills first on the monumental Müller organ in St. Bavo’s and then on the Cavaillé-Coll instrument in the Philharmonie Concert Hall. The theme in Round 1 was a melody from the 16th-century Antwerp Liedboek. Round 2 was something of a surprise: instead of a musical idea, a semi-abstract, 90-second film served to inspire the competitors! The three finalists were presented with the following theme from the hand of the Viennese organist (and Haarlem veteran!) Peter Planyavsky. 

The five-member jury (Lionel Rogg, Wolfgang Seifen, Naji Hakim, Joost Langeveld, and the Dutch composer Klaas de Vries) reflected different schools of thought. Winner of the 2012 competition was the Frenchman Paul Goussot, who competed in the grand finale against French colleague Noël Hazebroucq and the Polish organist Edyta Müller (at last, a female improviser!). The Dutch national daily De Volkskrant wrote: 

Although the three finalists were a good match, Goussot achieved the most convincing balance between the virtues of ‘organistic’ freedom and the binding power of the theme. He employed lucid rhythms, well-sounding harmonies, and did not shy away from adventurous harmonic progressions. Just before the end, chords erupted from the pipes like flashes of fire, but then he suddenly slowed, finishing his improvisation in a whispering coda. This winner of the 49th improvisation competition is a man who combines musical instinct and craftsmanship with a sense of theatre. 

Another leading national daily added: “With the Haarlem International Organ Improvisation Competition many great organ careers have been launched . . . ” 

The International
Summer Academy

The Haarlem Summer Academy 2012 offered an 11-day program of masterclasses plus a two-day symposium. In daily two-hour sessions, capita selecta from more than four centuries of organ repertory were discussed in depth. Center stage in the academy is the Müller organ in St. Bavo’s (where the gallery fortunately accommodates up to 30!) But other important historic and modern instruments in the town are also used, all within walking distance. 

Teachers at the 2012 summer academy were Harald Vogel on Sweelinck, Margaret Phillips on early English music, Ton Koopman, Jean-Claude Zehnder, Jacques van Oortmerssen and James David Christie on J. S. Bach, Olivier Latry and Louis Robilliard on French and German Romantics, Martin Sander on Max Reger, Roman Summereder on contemporary ‘keystones’, Zsigmond Szathmáry (working with young composers), Jos van der Kooy and Peter Planyavsky on improvisation, and Leo van Doeselaar on repertory for organ and strings.

This year’s academy was attended by 85 students from 27 countries and five continents. In addition to a group of young Russian players (regular guests for some years), a new group of Chinese students included young teachers from Beijing and Shanghai. Previously officially a postgraduate program, the academy now accepts undergraduate music students, reflecting the festival’s policy to attract the very best young players. Daily lectures and discussions allowed both students and the general public to meet and hear all the academy teachers. 

Festival symposium

Midway between the two academy weeks, the festival symposium “From Sweelinck to Bach” took the entire academy to the famous organs at Oosthuizen and Edam and to Amsterdam (Oude and Nieuwe Kerk), where lectures and recitals were given by Harald Vogel, Margaret Phillips, Jean-Claude Zehnder, and Christoph Wolff, among others. 

Young talents

For the second time, the Haarlem summer academy included a six-day course for young talents aged 13 to 18. After an international call, six players were selected on the basis of a written recommendation from their teachers and a submitted recording (a fast movement from a Bach trio sonata and a Pièce de Fantaisie by Vierne). In six two-hour sessions, the young players (from Holland, Germany, France, Croatia, Ireland, Portugal, and the USA) were coached by Olivier Latry and Margaret Phillips. These young organists made good use of the opportunity to attend all festival activities and to visit other masterclasses. No fewer than three of the young talents from the 2010 course returned to Haarlem to take part in other masterclasses—the Haarlem disease is highly contagious!

Young composers

The Haarlem young composers’ course took place again under the inspirational direction of the Hungarian-German Ligeti pupil Zsigmond Szathmáry. After an international call, three new organ pieces by young Dutch and German composers were selected for discussion during the six-session masterclass. Important considerations in the selection process were composition technique, originality, and whether a work was idiomatically suited to the organ. The new works were discussed with the composers (two of whom performed their own works) and presented to the public during a festival recital in St. Bavo’s. 

For the second time, the Leipzig Summer Academy will include this concert and a preparatory course under Szathmáry in its 2013 program. Thus young composers are assured of repeat performances of their new works at prominent international venues. 

New music

The festival concert programs featured many premieres: Zsigmond Szathmáry’s Fukushima Requiem was broadcast live on Dutch national radio; Dutch premieres included EOOS for organ and panpipes by Klaas de Vries, Radulescu’s Madrigali, Kagel’s Phantasie für Orgel mit Obbligati for organ and tape, Der Dom und das Meer for organ and tape by Mesías Maiguashca, and Szathmáry’s Leichte Brise—grosser Orkan. In a spectacular closing recital, Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee performed Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. 

50th anniversary

The 50th edition of the Haarlem International Organ Festival will take place July 11–26, 2014. Newcomers to the festival—and Haarlem veterans—will be warmly welcomed!

Note

Many of the items referred to in this article, including competition themes (and film), academy repertoire, and audio and video recordings of recitals and concerts (including Fukushima Requiem and The Rite of Spring), are available through www.organfestival.nl, where news of the 2014 festival will appear in the coming months.

The Haarlem International Organ Festival (July 12–26, 2014) celebrated a milestone with its 50th Improvisation Competition this summer. The festival runs concurrently with the Haarlem Summer Organ Academy, which celebrated its 46th anniversary. At the academy, fifteen teachers taught eleven subjects, and it was attended by 110 students from 30 countries. In addition to these classes there were around forty public events: recitals, lectures, masterclasses, and excursions to other cities. These could easily have accounted for every minute of every day, and it would have been a challenge to justify missing any of them. The centerpiece of the festival is the famed 1738 Müller organ at St. Bavo’s (restored by Marcussen, revoiced by Flentrop, and played by Mozart), but organs all around Haarlem are used for classes and concerts, including the Cavaillé-Coll at the Philharmonie and instruments at the Nieuwe Kerk, the Waalse Kerk, and the Doopsgesinde Kerk. 

To celebrate the event the organizers released The Haarlem Essays, a marvelous 480-page book (noted in the October 2014 issue of The Diapason and available through the Organ Historical Society). It contains essays and interviews directly related to the festival, to its instruments, and to its important figures over the years, and is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of this important festival. But it also includes essays on a variety of scholarly, historical, and aesthetic issues by noted scholars and performers, most of which are newly written, and which makes the volume of great interest beyond the subject of the festival itself. 

The Haarlem Essays comes with a compact disc of seven of the winning organ improvisations, dating back to Piet Kee’s in 1955, as well as all of the competition themes starting with the first one in 1951. The theme for the finals of this summer’s competition was by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. It appeared about an hour before the competition and thus was too late to be included. The two top prizewinners were Lukas Grimm, from Germany, who received the audience prize, and David Cassan, from France, who won first prize. They treated the theme so differently that it seemed to me to represent two entirely contrasting conceptions of improvisation: Grimm’s was dazzling in its variety of styles and techniques and built to a thrilling conclusion, while Cassan’s was more of an integrated whole in four large sections, with thematic recurrences as well as a polyphonic elaboration of the theme. Both were remarkable and hard to compare.

At the academy there were four Bach teachers: Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Michael Radulescu, and Jon Laukvik, and there were classes by Olivier Latry on Messiaen, Lorenzo Ghielmi on Italian-influenced North German music, Jon Laukvik on Vierne, Louis Robilliard on Franck, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini on Italian repertory, Bernhard Haas on contemporary repertory, Leo van Doeselaar on Mozart and Bach’s sons, Jürgen Essl and Peter Planyavsky on advanced improvisation, and Jos van der Kooy on improvisation for beginners. 

After a week of two-hour masterclasses it would be foolhardy to try to describe a teacher’s approach in a sentence, but I will try to anyway for the classes I took: Suzuki’s Bach was physical and extrovert in its emotion, and he was both practical and dramatic in his teaching. At one point he had a student playing pleno forearm clusters on the Müller to encourage her to be more physically engaged. I was scared to look over the balcony to see how the tourists were taking it. Radulescu brought great scholarship to his Bach class and showed how understanding rhetorical terms and an awareness of formal and historical issues can illuminate performance. Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini first taught at Haarlem in 1959 (where he was known as a member of the “holy trinity” along with Marie-Claire Alain and Anton Heiller). He returned this summer after a long absence, and it was a privilege to experience the elegance and generosity of his teaching and playing. His admission that he’s still uncertain about whether to normalize accidentals was liberating. Ghielmi’s class, which focused on Buxtehude and Bruhns, showed how drama and imagined operatic scenes can bring this repertory to life (a subject that Jean-Claude Zehnder also treats in his article in The Haarlem Essays), and also how a teacher with a sense of theater can entertain as well as instruct. And Haas’s inspiring class on contemporary repertory brought a level of belief and insight into the modernist repertory that I haven’t encountered in this country in a while, whether he was discussing Cage and the Buddhist conception of silence (not absence of emotion but its foundation), Schoenberg, or Messiaen.

There were excursions between the two weeks of classes, to Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Leiden. At the Nikolaikerk in Utrecht, where festival leader Stephen Taylor was the organist for many years, Christoph Wolff gave a fascinating presentation on the work of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, including the newly discovered document that shows that Bach studied with Georg Böhm when Bach was a student in Lüneberg and may very well have lived in his house. 

Many of the faculty gave forty-five-minute public lectures on a variety of topics. I’ll just mention two of them: Jon Laukvik’s lecture on tempo rubato focused on an aspect of early performance that we tend to ignore but which is well documented. He noted that historical performance practice uses “a small slice of the cake.” Christoph Wolff and Ton Koopman gave a joint talk on Bach in which Koopman reiterated his belief that Bach never used heels (well, with the exception of perhaps six places, according to Koopman). It would have been fun to have had the entire Haarlem faculty in on that topic, as none of them seem to agree with him. Forty-five minutes isn’t enough to deal with the questions that any of these lectures raised, let alone the topic of heels in Bach. But what a great way to both observe the masterclass teachers in a lecture setting and to raise the intellectual level of the conference by at least starting important discussions.

Stephen Taylor, chairman of the artistic council, is the guiding spirit of this most remarkable festival and is a most genial and ubiquitous presence. His introductions to all of the events were models of brevity and wit, but if you engaged him in conversation on any seemingly trivial topic you would discover that he’s something of a polymath, and subjects like neo-Gothic architecture or the history of the Dutch canals are likely to come up. That’s another recommended way to spend your time, if you have any energy left over from the festival.

All photos by Martin Goldray except as noted.