Northrop Organ

Organists for Northrop Open House including Dean Billmeyer (standing far right) with Michael Barone (third from right).

By pure luck more than good planning, I happened to be in Minneapolis for the opening weekend of the Northrop Auditorium Pipe Organ at the University of Minnesota.  Friday and Saturday night inaugural performances featured Paul Jacobs and included a Harbison world premiere as well as Saint-Saëns - Symphony No. 3 "Organ symphony" for which the organ part of the latter was played by Dean Billmeyer.

Sandwiched in between was a Saturday organ open house hosted by none other than American Public Radio's own Michael Barone, who proved to be both humorous and as engaging in real life as he is on his long running radio program PipeDreams.

The newly refurbished Northrop Auditorium organ is exquisite in clarity and the registrations sounded very well balanced.   Besides the excellent original organ design and voicing that had over the years fortunately been left largely in its original state (partly thru past lack of funding), there were two additional reasons the organ sounds so good:  Arup SoundLabs Acoustic 3D modeling and organ voicing by Jack Bethards.   More info on Arup SoundLabs here.  Foley-Baker and Associates in Connecticut fully restored the pipes and mechanicals.

Dean Billmeyer, organ professor at University of Minnesota and Northrop organ advocate, demonstrated the various organs and stop families composing the newly renovated organ.  Several other organists followed with an equally enjoyable morning concert.  In the afternoon, the console was also opened to the public, with somewhat less spectacular results to my ear at least, though no fault of the organ.  For example, some of the would-be organists mistook speed and volume for artistry.  I wished for something more suitable for this organ like Elgar's Nimrod (from Enigma variations) but other than the sublime beauty of the piece itself, what additional value would it have provided?  The morning concert organists had already ably demonstrated many of the organ's capabilities.

By the way, I have it on good authority that the organ in Royce Hall, UCLA is a close cousin if not near twin of this Northrop Auditorium organ, although in my humble opinion unless things have changed in the last two decades, the Royce Hall acoustics do not hold a candle to the newly rebuilt Northrop Hall acoustics and I suspect and hope the Northrop organ will see a lot more love than the Royce organ gets.

Read more about the Northrop organ on Minnesota Public Radio website.

Widor

So often I focus on the technical aspects of music, the rhythm, harmony, and melody (if any!).  With recorded music it is even more complicated, especially with pipe organ recordings, because there are so many things that can go wrong.   Audio clipping, over-compression, unintentional rumble, lack of clarity, or on the other hand, sterile harshness.  Sometimes the issue is simply a less-than-ideal instrument or room.

Sometimes I forget that music is really about communication.  Sharing musical ideas, emotions, feelings and aesthetic beauty,  passed over centuries.  This happens most effectively when the performer is able to channel the composer's intent clearly.  It takes incredible skill to make the difficult seem easy.

Someone once said, all history is biography.  Everything that happens in human history is because someone similar to you or I made choices and affected the course of history. 

So it is with music.   The human beings behind the music make it come alive.  Our lives would be so much poorer without the rich mix of composers and musicians who have enriched and continue to enrich our lives with music.

So it was a bit of a chagrin that I realized I had not shared with you my friend and concert organist and composer Dr. Angela Kraft Cross, AAGO, who recently recorded Widor's Symphonies 4 - 7.   She is so passionate about French organ music that she has traveled to France over the past two decades primarily for organ lessons.  She was recently featured on PipeDreams - twice.

Her Widor album is recorded on the 1880 Cavaillé-Coll organ in St. François-de-Sales, Lyon France, installed by Widor's own father and inaugurated by Widor himself with the premiere of Widor's ever popular 5th Symphony.   You simply can't get more authentic!   Even St. Sulpice can't claim that.

The artistic director is Louis Robilliard, the organist titulaire at St. François-de-Sales for over 40 years and with whom Dr. Kraft Cross has studied for 20 years.

Lastly, I am happy to report that the recording quality is superb, the registration is perfect, no doubt in no small part from knowledge of this particular instrument that comes only from years of exploration.  In the quiet sections you can even hear the tracker action making it feel very personal.   In the towering finales the ensemble is glorious.  Everyone enjoys the famous Toccata.   But in fact my favorite parts still remain the tender quiet sections in the first two movements of Widor's 5th symphony.

The 2-CD set is now available on her website:  I know you will like it.