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A Sixteenth-Century Roman Christmas

The Choir of St. Luke in the Fields, David Shuler, music director, is featured on a new recording, A Sixteenth-Century Roman Christmas.

The program includes music of Palestrina, Victoria, Carissimi, and Philips, recorded in concert last December. 

For information:

www.stlukeinthefields.org.

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A London Musical Journal: Holy Week and Easter 2006

Joel H. Kuznik

Joel H. Kuznik, NYC, has been writing published articles for 50 years. A native of Jack Benny’s hometown, Waukegan, his childhood idol nevertheless was Rubenstein, whom he eventually heard in Paris in 1975. But by 14, he became fascinated with the organ and Biggs, whom he heard twice in the mid 1950s. He studied organ with Austin Lovelace, David Craighead, Mme. Duruflé, Jean Langlais, and Anton Heiller, and conducting with Richard Westenburg and Michael Cherry, who was assistant to Georg Szell. Highlights of 70 years have included hearing Glenn Gould, Giulini in Brahms’ Fourth at Chicago, Carlos Kleiber’s “Der Rosenkavalier” at the Met, Herreweghe’s unmatchable “Mass in B Minor” at the Leipzig Bachfest, “Tosca” at La Scala, a one-on-one with Bernstein after the Mahler 2nd, and, finally, a birthday toast from Horowitz.

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One advantage of retirement is having the luxury of hearing colleagues and ensembles here and abroad. Of course you don’t have to be retired, but the freedom to plan your own time helps. I have taken a number of European musical tours: Italian opera, Paris organs, Bach and Luther, and the Leipzig Bach Festival.
I have also taken two Holy Week-Easter pilgrimages. In the late 1990s I observed Holy Week in London and celebrated Easter in both the Western and Eastern Orthodox rites, first in Naples and then a week later in the Oia, Santorini, Greece. This year I decided to take my pilgrimage in London. These are the options I discovered on the Internet, and from which I made a spreadsheet for daily reference. Choices had to be made, and not everything made the list, such as “Götterdämmerung” at the Royal Opera House, which would have consumed one of my six days.

Maundy Thursday

13:10: Eucharist with music, St. Anne & St. Agnes, Bach chorales
17:00: Sung Eucharist, Westminster Abbey, Byrd Mass & Duruflé
18:00: Mass, Westminster Cathedral, Monteverdi & Duruflé
19:30: Mozart Requiem, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, New London Singers

Good Friday

11:15: Matins & Litany, Temple Church, Lotti & Tallis
14:30: Bach’s St. John Passion, St. John’s Smith Square, Academy of Ancient Music
15:00: Lord’s Passion, Westminster Cathedral, Bruckner, Victoria

Holy Saturday

15:00: Evensong, Westminster Abbey, Victoria
19:00: Easter Vigil, St. Paul’s, Langlais Messe Solennelle
20:30: Easter Vigil, Westminster Cathedral, Vierne Messe solennelle

Easter Sunday

10:15: Matins, St. Paul’s, Britten Festival Te Deum
10:30: Eucharist, Westminster Abbey, Langlais Messe Solennelle
16:00: Early & baroque music, Wigmore Hall, Florilegium, Bach & Telemann
16:45: Organ recital, Westminster Cathedral
18:00: Easter music & Eucharist, St. Anne & St. Agnes, Handel & Telemann

Monday

19:30: Handel’s Messiah, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Belmont Ensemble

Maundy Thursday

A few blocks behind St. Paul’s Cathedral is St. Anne’s Lutheran Church, an international congregation founded in 1951, worshiping at the church of St. Anne and St. Agnes designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London (1666) and consecrated in 1680. Built in the form of a Greek cross, this small church was bombed in WWII, but was restored and reconsecrated in 1966 as a Lutheran parish. In addition to its architectural history, famous residents of the parish have included John Milton, John Bunyan, and John Wesley.
St. Anne’s is known for its music, “particularly in the Lutheran tradition of J. S. Bach, Schütz, and Buxtehude.” There are over 100 performances a year, including lunchtime concerts on Monday and Fridays. The core musical group is the Sweelinck Ensemble, a professional quartet under the direction of Cantor Martin Knizia. The St. Anne’s Choir had recently sung Bach’s St. John Passion, and last December their Bach Advent Vespers was featured in a live broadcast on BBC Radio 3; .

Eucharist with Music

Chorale: O Mensch bereit das Herze dein, Melchior Franck
Chorale: Im Garten leidet Christus Not, Joachim a Burgk
Chorale: Durch dein Gefängnis, Gottes Sohn, J. S. Bach
Chorale: Jesu Kreuz, Leiden und Pein, Adam Gumpelzhaimer
Ehre sei dir Christe (Matthäus Passion), Heinrich Schütz
The chorales were interspersed throughout this service and were sung handsomely by the Sweelinck Ensemble accompanied by the cantor on a continuo organ. The concluding Schütz St. Matthew Passion was particularly stirring. Definitely worth a detour from the large churches to hear baroque music with this degree of authentic intimacy.

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey, as glorious inside as it is dramatic outside, had a late afternoon Eucharist that moved the soul. So much can be said about the extraordinary history and presence of this church dating back to a Benedictine monastery in 960. It was later enlarged under King Edward the Confessor and consecrated in 1065 in honor of St. Peter, known as the “west minster” (Old English for monastery) in distinction from the east minster, St. Paul’s Cathedral. This magnificent gothic building is the result of work begun in the 13th century under Henry III and was not completed until 16th century.
Information, including details on the Harrison & Harrison organ (1937, four manuals, 78 stops), can be found at .

Sung Eucharist with the Washing of Feet

Mass for Four Voices, William Byrd
Organ prelude: Schmücke dich, o meine Seele, Bach
Improvisation leading to processional hymn: “Praise to the Holiest in the height” (Gerontius)
Gradual during Gospel procession: “Drop, drop, slow tears” (Song 46, Orlando Gibbons)
During the washing of the feet: Ubi caritas et amor, Maurice Duruflé
St. John 13:12–13, 15, plainsong mode II
Offertory hymn: “O thou, who at thy Eucharist didst pray” (Song 1, Orlando Gibbons)
After the Communion: Dominus Jesus in qua nocte tradebatur, Palestrina
While sacrament is carried to altar at St. Margaret’s: Pange lingua, plainsong mode II
During the stripping of the altar: Psalm 22:1–21, plainsong mode II

Westminster Abbey has an aura resonant with an awe of the divine. The service was without sermon, but so rich in ceremony and ritual that the preaching was in the actions, music, and language of the liturgy—in themselves a powerful message. Here everything seemed so right, from the dignified helpfulness of the ushers to the purposeful solemnity of the clergy—all enhanced by music done so well that it doesn’t call attention to itself because it is transparently integral to the worship and sung in a spirit reflective of the day’s liturgy. One did not just watch, but was drawn into the moment and left with an inner tranquility that spoke the essence of Maundy Thursday.

Good Friday

The weather was London: wet, dank, chilly and bleak—so fitting for the day. The Temple Church was recommended, not because of its recent attention due to the “The Da Vinci Code,” but primarily for its most traditional liturgy and excellence in music. The “Round Church” dates from 1185 and was the London headquarters of the Knights Templar. Their churches were “built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried.” The elongated choir was added by Henry III and consecrated on Ascension Day, 1240. The website provides an intriguing history of this unique church with directions and a much-needed map; .

Choral Matins, Book of Common Prayer (1662)
Introit: Crux fidelis, inter omnes, King John IV of Portugal
The Responses, plainsong
Venite, Exultemus, Anglican chant, Edward John Hopkins
Psalm 22, plainsong
The Lamentations of Jeremiah 1:1–2, Thomas Tallis
Benedictus, plainsong
Anthem: Crucifixus etiam pro nobis, Antonio Lotti
Litany, Thomas Tallis

Stephen Layton, director of music, directs a refined choir of men and boys, who were most telling in the Lotti Crucifixus, accompanied on a portative by the organist, James Vivian. The remainder of the service was played on the imposing and very British Romantic organ built by Harrison & Harrison (1924 and 2001, four manuals, 62 stops). The history of The Temple’s organs, including one by Father Smith, can be found on the website.

Back on Fleet Street I hopped on a bus to Westminster, hoping to hear Bach’s St. John Passion at St. John’s, Smith Square, just blocks from Westminster Abbey. A deconsecrated church dating from 1728, it now serves as a popular concert venue. In the crypt is a handy, economical restaurant “The Footstool,” where lunch was being served; .

St. John Passion, Johann Sebastian Bach, sung by Polyphony with the Academy of Ancient Music, Stephen Layton, conductor
Andrew Kennedy, Evangelist, tenor; James Rutherford, Christus; Thomas Guthrie, Pilatus; Emma Kirkby, soprano; James Bowman, countertenor; and Roderick Williams, bass.

This was a superb, masterful performance by a mature choir of 26 and professional soloists. The chorales were sung with care and the arias with sensitivity. The conductor’s tempos were quite sprightly and his approach dramatic, sometimes so much so that the next recitative intruded on the end of a chorale. This was, nevertheless, a fitting and most inspiring way to observe Good Friday.

Holy Saturday—Easter Eve

The Easter Vigil with its roots going back to earliest Christianity is the epitome of the Christian message and worship. It combines a rehearsal of salvation history with the rites of passage for the candidates (Latin, “those dressed in white”) through Baptism and Confirmation, and culminating in a celebration of the “Breaking of Bread” as Jesus did with his disciples after the Resurrection. The Vigil is an extended service with power-laden symbolism—the passage from utter darkness to brilliant light, the anointing with oil in the sign of the cross, the drowning of the self in baptismal waters, “putting on Christ,” and the sharing of the bread and wine in union with the community of faithful.
In London there could be no more fitting place to celebrate the Vigil than the regal diocesan St. Paul’s Cathedral, founded some 1500 years ago in 604 by Mellitus, a follower of St. Augustine who was sent to convert the Anglo-Saxons. It has been rebuilt a number of times with the most recent version begun in 1633 with a neo-classical portico or façade. The current design by Christopher Wren received royal approval in 1675, but was not finished until 1710. Later came the woodwork by Grinling Gibbons for the huge Quire and Great Organ, and in the 19th–20th century the glittering mosaics in the dome, envisioned by Wren. Most will remember St. Paul’s as the site of Prince Charles’s wedding to Diana. It has just undergone a complete renovation at a cost of £40 million in anticipation of its 300th anniversary in 2008; .
The organ was built by Henry Willis (1872) with an extensive renovation and enlargement completed by Mander (1977, five manuals, 108 stops). Not many organs deliver the overpowering experience that this organ can, especially when stops in the dome are added with a sound that not only surrounds, but also envelops worshippers.
The liturgy took place, not in the grand Quire, but “in the round” under the dome with a free-standing altar at one axis and the choir (with a small organ) to the left on risers, surrounded by the congregation.
Upon entry one received an impressive 28-page service booklet. One could only wonder “O Lord, how long?” But the service moved right along in two hours, including baptisms and confirmations. The service began in darkness; only with the procession to the dome by the participants did light begin to dawn as candles were shared. The Vigil had only one lesson instead of the usual nine readings. Then—the dramatic Easter Greeting by the bishop, “Alleluia! Christ is risen,” followed by bells and a thunderous fanfare from the organ—with a sudden blaze of almost blinding light as all the cathedral and the dome with its glittering mosaics lit up.

The Vigil Liturgy of Easter Eve

Setting: Messe solennelle, Jean Langlais
Exsultet sung responsively with the congregation
Song of Moses, Exodus 15, Huw Williams
Gloria in Excelsis, Langlais
Hymn: “The strife is o’er, the battle done ” (Gelobt sei Gott)
Hymn: “Awake, awake: fling off the night!” (Deus Tuorum Militum)
Motet: Sicut cervus, Palestrina
Hymn: “Here, risen Christ, we gather at your word” (Woodlands)
Sanctus, Langlais
Agnus Dei, Langlais
Surrexit Christus hodie, alleluia!, Samuel Scheidt (arr. Rutter)
Hymn: “Shine, Jesus, Shine”
Hymn: “Christ is risen, Alleluia!” (Battle Hymn of the Republic)
Toccata, Symphonie No. 5, Widor

The impact of this service was profound and intensely extraordinary, not as formal as Westminster Abbey, but with no less sincerity. The Langlais setting with the punctuating fortissimo chords from organ was overwhelming. The hymn singing, fueled by the organ’s energy, was similarly dynamic and enthusiastic, and the final hymn sung to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” went at such an exuberant clip that one had to conduct beats to keep up. How could one divorce one’s mind from the text, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”?
After this high-spirited hymn, the people, with their pace set by an energized Widor Toccata, exited up the center aisle toward the west end, facing the huge open cathedral doors with a gleaming light streaming in from the floodlit street, and walked past the bishop and the font into the light—they were ready for the Resurrection.

Easter Sunday

Sunday was another day, and, thankfully, the sun shone. I arrived at 9:15 am for Westminster Abbey’s 10:30 service to an already long queue. Had I arrived fifteen minutes earlier, I might have sat in the desirable rectangle framed by the choir screen and the chancel. But sitting just a few rows into the transept the sound was less immediate and gripping, and the hymn singing less compelling.

Sung Eucharist

Pre-service: Toccata in F Major, Bach

Setting: Messe solennelle [with brass quartet], Langlais Hymn: “Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia,” Lyra Davidica
Gloria in excelsis, Langlais
Gospel Procession: Victimae paschali, plainsong, arr. Andrew Reid
Hymn: “At the Lamb’s high feast” (Salzburg)
Sanctus, Langlais
During the Communion: Agnus Dei, Langlais; Christus resurgens ex mortuis, Peter Philips
Hymn: “Thine be the glory” (Maccabaeus)
Postlude: Finale, Symphonie II, Vierne
This was a straightforward Eucharistic service with fine music well performed. The Abbey Choir was conducted by James O’Donnell, Organist and Master of the Choristers, and accompanied by the London Brass quartet. The organist was Robert Quinney, Sub-Organist. The choir sang with their usual distinction, and in comparing this version of the Langlais, even with brass, to the Vigil the night before, clearly St. Paul’s was the more persuasive and affecting.

In the afternoon I headed to Westminster Cathedral, which according to the Internet performed some impressive music during Holy Week and on Easter that included Monteverdi, Duruflé, Byrd, Bruckner, Victoria, and Vierne’s Messe solennelle. But I regret to say that this Vespers, largely a chanted service and because of that, was an unexpected disappointment, especially since I had read such admiring CD reviews.
The cathedral, its striking architectural style from “Byzantine style of the eastern Roman Empire,” was designed by the Victorian architect John Francis Bentley on a site originally owned by the Abbey, but sold to the Catholics in 1884. The foundation was laid in 1895, and the structure of the building was completed eight years later. The interior with its impressive mosaics and marbles is said to be incomplete, but the cathedral is certainly a visual tableau .

Solemn Vespers and Benediction sung in Latin

Office Hymn: Ad cenam Agni provide
Psalms 109 and 113A (114)
Canticle: Salus et gloria et virtus Deo nostro (Revelation 19:1–7)
Magnificat primi toni, Bevan
Motet: Ecce vincit, Leo Philips
O sacrum convivium, Gregorian chant
Organ voluntary: Fête, Langlais

Unfortunately the printed order of service provided the Latin-English text, but without information on composers or musicians—facts only available on the Internet. The service seemed austere both in its solemnity from the entrance of the choir with many clergy and in its liturgical style.
There is obvious musical talent with a large professional choir of men and boys, but the musicians work with disadvantages. The choir is on an elevated shelf behind the baldaquin and high altar, which distances the sound and at times makes the singing seemed forced, especially by the men. The most disappointing, regrettable aspect was chanting “the old-fashioned way” with “schmaltzy” organ accompaniments on voix celeste or flutes. Solesmes is, by all counts, the gold standard, and after that all else pales. One would have thought the reform of chant in the Catholic Church and after Vatican II would have had greater impact and changed practice.
Martin Baker is the master of music and the assistant organist is Thomas Wilson. The Grand Organ is hidden by a nondescript screen in a chamber above the narthex and was only revealed in the Langlais Fête at the end—like an anomaly, but played with fire and aplomb. The organ was built by Henry Willis III (1922–1932, four manuals, 78 stops) and was restored by Harrison & Harrison in 1984.

Did I have one more service in me? I bravely headed to Trafalgar Square and St. Martin-in-the-Fields for Evensong. This church has a full schedule of services plus over 350 concerts a year. It may date back as far as 1222, and it can lay claim to the fact that both Handel and Mozart played the organ here in 1727. Today one immediately thinks of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields founded in the 1950s with Sir Neville Marriner.
The church’s activities are amazing, but it is not resting on its laurels. It is the midst of a £34 million campaign (already £24 million in hand) to expand its facilities inside and out to include an outdoor courtyard, a rehearsal space, a Chinese community center, and space for social services. It will also mean a much-needed restoration to the interior of the church to bring it closer to its historic 18th-century conception. In the crypt there is a shop and a café that serves nutritious meals all day.

Choral Evensong

Introit: This Joyful Eastertide, arr. Wood
Responses, Martin Neary
Canticles: Collegium Regale, Herbert Howells
Anthem: Rise heart, thy Lord has risen, Vaughan Williams
Postlude: Victimae Paschali, Tournemire

What a joy! Familiar music well done by a superb, effective choir with first-rate organ playing. A great, satisfying way to complete my Easter celebration. Alleluia! The talented and youthful director of music, Nicholas Danks, is full of enthusiasm. The assistant organist, David Hirst, played the Tournemire with particular verve and drama on the fine organ by J. W. Walker and Sons (1990, three manuals, 47 stops) with its battery of fiery French reeds. I didn’t think I was up for another Messiah this season, but these musicians felt the choir presenting the next night at St. Martin’s was one of London’s finest.

Monday

Messiah, George Friedrich Handel
English Chamber Choir, Belmont Ensemble of London, Peter G. Dyson, conductor
Philippa Hyde, soprano; David Clegg, countertenor; Andrew Staples, tenor; and Jacques Imbrailo, baritone.
Things are moving along in London, and sprightly tempos are in. I found that to be the case with the Bach St. John Passion and here in the quick-paced Messiah, which came in at under two hours performance time—something of a record, I think.
The crackerjack orchestra and youthful soloists were on board, but the talented choir, perhaps under-rehearsed and lacking experience with this lively conductor, struggled to keep up, especially in Part I. “For unto us a child is born” proved that at these tempos “His yoke is easy” was not easy at all! The soloists all did fine work, but the tenor and baritone in particular distinguished themselves with eloquent declamations. In many respects this was a laudable performance brought to a rousing conclusion with “Worthy is the Lamb.”
Continuing in the spirit of Handel, I decided the next day to visit the Handel House Museum at 25 Brook Street where Handel lived in a multi-story house from 1723 to 1759. Here he composed famous works such Messiah, Zadok the Priest, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. It is a modest museum compared to the Händel-Haus Halle in Germany , but certainly worth a visit.
One is treated to an introductory film plus interesting prints of Handel’s contemporaries, two reconstructed period harpsichords (one with a zealous player dashing up and down double-keyboards), the Handel bed recently refurbished, and a current exhibit on “Handel and the Castrati,” with photo-bios of the leading castrati. Handel lived quite well indeed, paying a modest rent of £50 a year and with three servants to dote over him—every musician’s dream!
London is a six-hour flight from the East Coast and offers a plethora of musical possibilities, especially at Christmas and Easter. Others would have made different choices tailored to their interests. For me this was a full, rewarding week, something every musician needs from time to time to refresh the spirit—to capture the energy, vitality, and imagination of others. Europe may not be the bargain it once was. You can’t take it with you anyway, but these can be empowering moments you take to the bank that last forever.

 

Catching up with Stephen Tharp

Reflections ten years later

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is editorial director of The Diapason. 

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An interview with Stephen Tharp appeared a decade ago in The Diapason (“A conversation with Stephen Tharp: Catching up with a well-traveled recitalist,” January 2004). At that time, Tharp’s discography included six recordings, and he had made over twenty intercontinental tours. Among the topics discussed were Tharp’s many concert tours, his advocacy of new music, and interest in transcriptions. In the decade since, Tharp has continued his travels and performances, and received many accolades. He presently resides in New York City, where he serves as associate director of music at the Church of Our Saviour. Stephen Tharp will be the featured performer at the closing recital of 2014’s American Guild of Organists national convention in Boston.
 
 
Joyce Robinson: Our previous interview’s title called you a “well-traveled recitalist,” and that seems truer than ever today. Tell us about your concert tours (and how you keep track of all those recitals!).
 
My grandfather, who was director of personnel management at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Chicago for some 40-plus years, and also a lecturer at both Northwestern University and University of Chicago post-World War II, was a real business model for me. He was the ultimate paper hoarder, keeping track of all of his correspondence, lectures, and so forth, throughout his life. For better or worse, he taught me to keep a paper record of everything I’d accomplished. 
 
Of course, I let go of a great deal with time, but, as far as concert programs go, I have saved one copy of everything I have ever played. Consequently, after 1,400 concerts, I am glad I can look back, trace them, and keep track—like keeping a diary. My 1300th solo recital was at St. Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, on their very large Marcussen organ, in November 2008. A few days later, in St. Martin, Dudelange, Luxembourg, was the concert that coincided with my Jeanne Demessieux Complete Organ Works CD set (Aeolus Recordings) “release party,” where the recording was officially made available to the public for the first time. It remains my largest recording project to date, which I will discuss more a little later. The recording led directly to a series of three concerts in October 2010 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, wherein I played the complete organ works of Demessieux.
 
On July 30, 2013, I performed my 1400th solo concert, for the organ festival in La Verna, Tuscany (some of which is up on YouTube). This is the place, on top of a mountain and a 90-minute drive from Florence, where Francis of Assisi spent his later years on land that was bequeathed to him. It is a picturesque spot surrounded by forests untouched for some 900 years; in the center is a basilica where there is a regular summer festival of organ concerts catering to an immense tourist crowd that packs the house for recitals starting at 9 p.m. (when the temperature cools down enough for a full church to be tolerable). A small group of friends and colleagues celebrated afterwards with a private meal that included regional wines.
 
What is awesome for the organ in central European culture is that festivals like this, well attended, grow on trees. In Germany alone, you could hit a series every weekend for two years without repeating yourself—funding in place, quite often new organs, and audiences that support its continuation. There seems something about Old World culture that’s founded in the deepest roots, centuries of traditions under them, that maintains a thriving life no matter what the come-and-go cultural shifts of any given generation—a kind of condensed richness around which you can build an entire life. 
 
As for my own tours, 1,400 concerts means too many to name. Standouts include the Gewandhaus, Leipzig; the Igreja de Lapa in Porto, Portugal; Victoria Hall, Geneva; the Frauenkirche, Dresden (which was only recently reconstructed); the inaugural organ week of the new Seifert organ at the Cathedral in Speyer, Germany, with its 14-second acoustic—a whole new character for Alain’s Trois Danses; Ben van Oosten’s glorious festival in The Hague; twice at the Berlin Cathedral, with another concert set for summer 2015; Cologne Cathedral (with its 5,000 regular concertgoers during the summer Orgelfeierstunden, encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs if necessary and seat themselves in the aisles, which they do, going wild over a program of Guillou, Alain, Dupré, and Litaize); the summer festival at St. Bavo, Haarlem (there are no words for the experience of playing this organ); playing the de Grigny Messe on the Dom Bedos at Ste. Croix in Bordeaux, and so on. In addition to that, my one and only action-packed trip without jetlag adjustment, over six days, for concerts in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Riga. Twice to Hong Kong, twice to Korea, twice to Australia. Every memorable moment outside the box would take a book. But connect all the dots over time and it’s the richest and most diverse menu of experiences I could ever have imagined. And as an American, it is seeing the forest from outside the trees, in spades, and that has determined a great deal for me.
 
 
You’ve also been busy with recordings. Would you summarize these, and tell us about your experiences making them? 
 
This is a discussion of but a few of my projects. Ultimately, audio and video recordings are one’s most powerful tools. How one can spread the word on Facebook, iTunes, or YouTube puts global exposure at your fingertips, which is wonderful. Listening as a child to LPs of many organs, I often fantasized about getting to these instruments one day, either to perform on them or record them myself. One of my greatest battery chargers, the kind that continues to inspire in the long term, has been recording a number of these landmark instruments, both for JAV Recordings and the Aeolus label in Germany. 
 
The first opportunity like this was St. Sulpice, Paris, where I recorded in October 2001, a somewhat nervous traveler given the horrific events of September 11 the month before—and amplified by a flight over to Paris on a plane that was mostly empty. In 2005 I was back in St. Sulpice for two more projects. A large choir, comprising several groups, was assembled to record the Widor Mass, op. 36, for choir and two organs (main and choir organ), which was never before recorded in St. Sulpice. With Daniel Roth at the grand orgue, Mark Dwyer and I played musical benches with the orgue de choeur in the front of the church. In the two days that followed that project, I had the great pleasure of recording Dupré’s Le Chemin de la Croix there. Dupré recorded this years before in St. Sulpice on LP, which went out of print. So, my recording is the only one available of this entire work on the organ most associated with the composer.
 
In the summer/early fall of 2008 I made two more recordings for JAV within a month of each other, which were released at different times. One is my organ adaptation of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations on Paul Fritts’s stunning magnum opus instrument at St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Columbus, Ohio, and the other a mixed repertoire recording on the Christian Müller organ of St. Bavo, Haarlem, the Netherlands. My first experience with this famous organ was as a student when, at age 20, I spent three weeks at the Haarlem International Organ Academy as the result of a generous scholarship from Illinois College. That experience was life-changing in that it turned my thinking upside down and, consequently, permanently re-directed the way I would conceive performance as it is informed by music history and aesthetics, standards that remain in place to this day. I can’t fully express how thankful I am that this was an experience I had at a young age, when these influences had the chance to be the most powerful.
 
On this side of the pond is the first commercial recording of the Casavant organ Opus 3837 at the Brick Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. This instrument, a cooperative design between director of music Keith Tóth and Jean-Louis Coignet, is a masterpiece. A synthesis between the French symphonic and American orchestral, the organ covers music from Jongen to Tournemire to Hakim to Guilmant, in a warm acoustic environment. There is also my Organ Classics from Saint Patrick Cathedral in New York City—all somewhat lighter fare, some organ solo, some organ plus trumpet, aside from a few heftier pieces by Cook, Vierne, and Widor. It was a great pleasure to have been able to make these two recordings.
 
All of my commercial CD releases from St. Sulpice thus far are on JAV, and all engineered by the outstanding Christoph Frommen, who also owns the Aeolus label in Germany. It was with Frommen, and for Aeolus, that I embarked upon my biggest recording project to date: The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux. I had played much of her music starting as early as my college years, but to document all of her organ solo works on recording was an exciting and challenging prospect. Too many stereotypes were also floating around about this music: that it was a language worth little more than an extension of Dupré’s harmonic idiom, more cerebral than communicative, and not worth the effort. I sought to prove this very wrong. 
 
At the time of the recording, several pieces remained unpublished, and so Chris Frommen and I sought copies of these in manuscript form from Pierre Labric, one of Demessieux’s more famous students, who generously shared the scores with us for this project. These are, specifically, Nativité, Andante, and the Répons (the one for Easter being the only score from the set previously published), now printed by Delatour in France. 
 
We needed an electric-action organ for certain pieces, most importantly the treacherous Six Études, so some of the recording was done on the Stahlhuth/Jann instrument at the Church of St. Martin, Dudelange, Luxembourg, an organ of great color and strength. For the remainder of the release, we chose the great Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. Ouen, Rouen, France, an instrument closely associated with Demessieux’s life. This is such a splendid oeuvre that was too long overlooked. If you don’t know the music, investigate it.
It is with Aeolus that I will release my next recording, the Symphonies 5 and 6 of Louis Vierne. Symphonies 1–4 are now available with Daniel Roth, and my release will complete the set, hopefully later this year. All were recorded again at St. Sulpice.
 
One additional recording must be mentioned, as it appears as a single track on iTunes and is not part of any CD. In September 2010, as a part of one of Michael Barone’s Pipedreams Live! concerts, I played the world premiere of a work I’d commissioned for the occasion from George Baker, Variations on ‘Rouen.’ It is also composed in memory of Jehan Alain, and so there are harmonic and motivic nods in that direction, very much on purpose. That first performance was played at the Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; my recording of the piece, made as well at St. Sulpice, is what is available on iTunes. There is also a YouTube concert video of my live performance of it at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in Missouri from the summer of 2013.
 
 
You are also a composer and arranger, creating both transcriptions and original compositions. Are any of these published? Do you have any plans for future works?
 
I have only one published organ work, my Easter Fanfares, composed in 2006 as the result of a commission from Cologne Cathedral in Germany. Two new high-pressure en chamade Tuba ranks had been added to the instrument at the west end of the cathedral, which they wanted to play for the first time at Easter in 2006. My work was composed to be the postlude for that occasion. It is structured, at surface level, like an improvised sortie with the architecture of a written composition, with all melodic and motivic material throughout derived from only two sources: Ite Missa est, Alleluia, the dismissal at the conclusion of the Mass, and the Easter sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes. The piece is dedicated to the Cologne Cathedral organist Winfried Bönig, and is published in a collection of organ music specifically written for the Cologne Cathedral organ called Cologne Fanfares. It is published by Butz Musikverlag of Bonn. There is a JAV YouTube video of me playing the work at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, made a few years ago. 
My only other fairly recent solo organ work was occasion-specific, my Disney’s Trumpets, written for the organ at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, where I premiered it in concert in March 2011. It is a short, agitato fanfare designed to highlight the various powerful reed stops of this particular instrument, heard both separately by division and, at times, altogether. I kept the unique visual design of the façade in mind. In musical terms, this is reflected in short riffs, which appear rapidly, flinging gestures into many directions at will. And as with the organ’s façade, which appears random to the eye amidst an underlying cohesive structure, so is true in this work, where an overall architecture gives proportion to what seems irregular. As an added layer of tongue-and-cheek, I used as the model for the riffs a motive from a song by David Bowie, of all things. (I don’t remember the name anymore.) I have only played Disney’s Trumpets that one time.
 
I also have an ongoing list of organ transcriptions, which I’m getting to little by little. Those are premiered here and there from time to time; Chopin, Dukas, Stravinsky, Bartók, Mussorgsky, Liszt. I have also toured quite a bit with David Briggs’s colorful transcription of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and two rather demanding organ adaptations by a gifted Italian colleague, Eugenio Fagiani, namely J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Ravel’s La Valse.
 
 
You have received several awards in recent years. Tell us about those.
 
There are two particular awards about which I feel especially honored. One is the 2011 International Performer of the Year award from the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists, the only award of its kind specifically for organists from any professional music guild in the United States. It is a recognition of long-standing accomplishment whose list of recipients is truly global, and I tie with Dame Gillian Weir for the youngest in the award’s history (received, respectively, at the same age in our early 40s). The other is the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Germany’s highest critic’s award for recordings, which I received for The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux release on Aeolus. Imagine some 140 judges looking at an assortment of releases and ripping apart everything from sound quality to performance to graphic design to music notes scholarship. This is the prize. The recipients are chosen under great scrutiny, more so than voted for (and there is a big difference). It is, for me subjectively, the ultimate compliment. Other recipients at that time include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Marc-André Hamelin, and Cecilia Bartoli.
 
 
Beyond your solo career, you have also worked as a church musician. Are you presently doing so?
 
In September 2013 I was offered the position of associate director of music and organist at the Church of Our Saviour (Roman Catholic) in Manhattan by the newly appointed music director and organist, Paul Murray, a long-time friend and colleague in the city with whom I have collaborated on many previous occasions. Ironically, it was in this very church that my wife Lena and I had our son Adrian (born January 5, 2013) baptized. This music program embodies high standards of choral singing—we have an all-professional choir—use of chant, a rich palette of choral and organ repertoire, and no-nonsense liturgical organ improvisation, something I was not doing in New York City since my days at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The mission statement of the church has been beautifully summarized by Mr. Murray as follows:

 
In the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, it was made clear that the Church’s musical heritage, namely chant and polyphony, was to be preserved. At the Church of Our Saviour in New York City, it is my goal to build a liturgical music program that is in concurrence with the admonition of the Second Vatican Council, by developing a professional music program offering music of the highest caliber to the Greater Glory of God.
 
Paul and I have a great rapport as professional colleagues, devoid of the drama that all too often accompanies working relationships. In this regard, I’ve struck gold. The church is also very supportive of my travels. Everything about this position is a match, the kind one hopes to find but rarely does. It is a special centering for me that provides a constant in my artistic life as other things continue in different directions.
 
I must also make mention of post-Easter April 2008, when I was asked to be the official organist for the New York City visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. I was contacted by the current director of music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Jennifer Pascual, who was in charge of music for all events for the Pope’s visit. The organist at the cathedral had been taken ill, and I was asked to cover all televised events from St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Yorkville (in Manhattan), St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and, yes, Yankee Stadium, which took place outdoors. I was struck primarily with how this church leader in his 80s, not some young pop star, captivated these massive gatherings with an energy that was palpable. Music for each of the three occasions was different, involving soloists, choirs, and instrumental ensembles, rehearsals for all of which occurred in under two weeks. It was quite moving to be in the center of the energy that radiated from these huge events. And my days at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the mid-1990s had prepared me for live television, which is always exhilarating.
 
 
What are your thoughts about the future? 
 
Becoming the father of a little boy who is now 1-1/2 years old has become the ultimate filter. My shifts in priorities have been herculean, in a way that a parent understands. I am very sensitive to the passage of time one doesn’t see again, so there is this intolerance for the irrelevant, the counter-productive and the trivial.
 
The most important thing for me to remember is why I have always done what I do, as that unshakably justifies how I must continue. It is critical for me to remember that I was never media-constructed at a young age. In fact, that approach in this country during my 20s, under management, completely failed. I have, however, taken decades to build where I am, and am one who is given the respect on a global platform that I probably sought above all else. It’s an Old School approach to achievement—and it stems from the kind of teaching I had—the kind that leaves you a library of references, not just a membership, and that you don’t accomplish overnight. It must be earned.
 
This all underscores one aspect of my musical life that has become even more pronounced. I consider myself a very serious artist, not an entertainer, one who believes that an audience knows the difference between putting before them a substantial product and just celebrity. If what you speak reaches people profoundly, they remember not only you as the vehicle but the statement, the music itself, and musical memories that matter. You see, this is what will actually save our instrument. Popularity alone is not enough. Actually moving an audience is vital, as this instigates a curiosity for more, which has direct impact on literacy, not merely fascination. It is not possible to produce book after book without addressing the literacy of your readers and then claim you have “saved the book.” There is a big difference between selling an audience tickets and keeping them there. That said, every teacher has to make decisions: one cannot build rockets by continuing to play with blocks. And if nobody curates the collection, what will all of the newly schooled have to hear beyond Concerts 101? 
 
It is no great secret that I have a mostly European career. My own passion for the lineage of such long-rooted, historically aware and layered culture seems to be a marriage with the demand for it from the large (and multi-aged) audiences that continue to want programs of real meat and substance. I feel that I am most inspired engaging an environment wherein, no matter what other globalization invades, the baby isn’t simply discarded with the bathwater. This will continue as my direction for the future, regardless of what else happens. It’s taken me years to evolve to this point, but this article documents part of the journey.
 
 

Stephen Tharp's Discography

 
Naxos Recordings 8.553583
 
Ethereal Recordings 108
 
Ethereal Recordings 104
 
Capstone Records 8679
 
Ethereal Recordings 123
 
 
JAV Recordings 130
 
JAV Recordings 138
 
JAV Recordings 161
 
JAV Recordings 160
 
JAV Recordings 162
 
Aeolus Recordings 10561
 
JAV Recordings 178
 
JAV Recordings 172
 
JAV Recordings 185
 
JAV Recordings 5163
 
 
Christopher Berry (cond.); Stephen Tharp (org.); the Seminary Choir of the Pontifical North American College, Vatican City State
Duruflé Messe “cum Jubilo”; sung chants; organ improvisations
JAV Recordings 181
 
Christopher Hyde (cond.); Camille Haedt-Goussu (cond.); Daniel Roth (Grand Orgue); Stephen Tharp (Orgue du Choeur); Mark Dwyer (Orgue du Choeur); Choeur Darius Milhaud; Ensemble Dodecamen
Widor Mass, Op. 36 plus motets; choir/organ works by Bellenot and Lefébure-Wély; organ improvisations by Daniel Roth
Recorded at St. Sulpice, Paris, France
JAV Recordings 158
 
Richard Proulx (cond.); Stephen Tharp (org.); The Cathedral Singers
Recorded at St. Luke’s Church, Evanston, Illinois
GIA Publications, Chicago
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-926
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.); Edmund Connoly (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-954
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.); Edmund Connoly (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-955

 

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