Sunday 8 October 2023 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Stephen Tharp
New York City, NY (USA)
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Stephen Tharp
New York City, NY (USA)
Program
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
(Organ adaptation by Stephen Tharp)
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prière, Op. 20
André Fleury (1902-1995)
Prélude, Andante et Toccata (1932)
George Baker (b. 1951)
Prière Grégorienne (2018)
Max Reger (1873-1916)
Choralfantasie: “Straf’ mich nicht in deinem Zorn,” Op. 40, No. 2
Stephen Tharp
Improvisation on submitted themes
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
(Organ adaptation by Stephen Tharp)
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prière, Op. 20
André Fleury (1902-1995)
Prélude, Andante et Toccata (1932)
George Baker (b. 1951)
Prière Grégorienne (2018)
Max Reger (1873-1916)
Choralfantasie: “Straf’ mich nicht in deinem Zorn,” Op. 40, No. 2
Stephen Tharp
Improvisation on submitted themes
“Stephen Tharp had the riskiest billing, closing out the (2014 Boston AGO National) Convention in the only recital before the entire gathering. Tharp responded with the performance of a lifetime……….the whole thing so dazzlingly executed as to emboss itself upon the memory.”
-Choir & Organ
Stephen Tharp, described as having “performed colorfully, rousing and splendid” by The New York Times, and hailed as “the organist for the connoisseur” (Organ magazine, Germany), “the thinking person’s performer” (Het Orgel), “every bit the equal of any organist” (The American Organist magazine) and “the consummate creative artist” (Michael Barone, Pipedreams), is recognized as one of the great concert organists of our age. Having played more than 1600 concerts across over 60 tours worldwide, Stephen Tharp has built one of the most well-respected international careers in the world. He is the recipient of the 2011 International Performer of the Year Award by the American Guild of Organists, considered by many to be the highest honor given to organists by a professional musicians' guild in the United States. In 2015 he was given the Paul Creston Award which recognizes artistic excellence in church music and the performing arts.
His list of performances since 1987 includes such distinguished venues as St. Bavo, Haarlem; The Royal Albert Hall, London; St. Eustache, Paris; Ste. Croix, Bordeaux; The Hong Kong Cultural Centre; the Town Halls of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia; Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow; the Tonhalle, Zürich and Victoria Hall, Geneva; the Duomo, Milano, Italy; the cathedrals in Berlin, Frankfurt, Köln, Mainz, München, Münster, Passau and Speyer; the Gewandhaus, Leipzig; and the Frauenkirche, Dresden, Germany; Monaco Cathedral; Antwerp Cathedral, Belgium; Dvorak Hall, Prague; the Hallgrimskirkja, Reykjavik, Iceland; The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; The Kimmel Center, Philadelphia; The Riverside Church, New York City; Rice University, Houston; Spivey Hall, Atlanta; and Severance Hall, Cleveland.
He has given master classes at Yale University; the Eastman School of Music; Rice University, Houston; Westminster Choir College; the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bethel University (St. Paul, MN); the Hochschulen für Musik in Trossingen and Bochum (Germany); and for chapters of the American Guild of Organists. He has also adjudicated for competitions at the Juilliard School; Northwestern University; chapters of the American Guild of Organists’; and served as a member of the jury for the 2018 Chartres International Organ Competition.
He is also an active chamber musician nationwide, having performed on organ, piano and harpsichord with artists such as Thomas Hampson, Itzhak Perlman, Jennifer Larmore, Rachel Barton Pine, the American Boychoir (James Litton, conductor), the St. Thomas Choir (John Scott, conductor), and at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. His 16 solo organ recordings can be found on the labels Acis Productions, JAV Recordings, Aeolus, Naxos, Organum and Ethereal, and are available from the Organ Historical Society (www.ohscatalog.org), JAV Recordings (www.pipeorgancds.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.com).
His commercial release The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux on Aeolus Recordings, received the 2009 Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Germany’s premier critic’s prize for recordings, as well as the French 5 Diapason award. Stephen Tharp plays St. Bavo, Haarlem, The Netherlands on the JAV label was called “the most beautiful CD of 2009” by Resmusica in France, and his Acis Productions release The St. James’ Recital was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Stephen Tharp earned his BA degree, magna cum laude, from Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL and his MM from Northwestern University, Chicago, where he studied with Rudolf Zuiderveld and Wolfgang Rübsam, respectively. He has also worked privately with Jean Guillou in Paris.
-Choir & Organ
Stephen Tharp, described as having “performed colorfully, rousing and splendid” by The New York Times, and hailed as “the organist for the connoisseur” (Organ magazine, Germany), “the thinking person’s performer” (Het Orgel), “every bit the equal of any organist” (The American Organist magazine) and “the consummate creative artist” (Michael Barone, Pipedreams), is recognized as one of the great concert organists of our age. Having played more than 1600 concerts across over 60 tours worldwide, Stephen Tharp has built one of the most well-respected international careers in the world. He is the recipient of the 2011 International Performer of the Year Award by the American Guild of Organists, considered by many to be the highest honor given to organists by a professional musicians' guild in the United States. In 2015 he was given the Paul Creston Award which recognizes artistic excellence in church music and the performing arts.
His list of performances since 1987 includes such distinguished venues as St. Bavo, Haarlem; The Royal Albert Hall, London; St. Eustache, Paris; Ste. Croix, Bordeaux; The Hong Kong Cultural Centre; the Town Halls of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia; Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow; the Tonhalle, Zürich and Victoria Hall, Geneva; the Duomo, Milano, Italy; the cathedrals in Berlin, Frankfurt, Köln, Mainz, München, Münster, Passau and Speyer; the Gewandhaus, Leipzig; and the Frauenkirche, Dresden, Germany; Monaco Cathedral; Antwerp Cathedral, Belgium; Dvorak Hall, Prague; the Hallgrimskirkja, Reykjavik, Iceland; The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; The Kimmel Center, Philadelphia; The Riverside Church, New York City; Rice University, Houston; Spivey Hall, Atlanta; and Severance Hall, Cleveland.
He has given master classes at Yale University; the Eastman School of Music; Rice University, Houston; Westminster Choir College; the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bethel University (St. Paul, MN); the Hochschulen für Musik in Trossingen and Bochum (Germany); and for chapters of the American Guild of Organists. He has also adjudicated for competitions at the Juilliard School; Northwestern University; chapters of the American Guild of Organists’; and served as a member of the jury for the 2018 Chartres International Organ Competition.
He is also an active chamber musician nationwide, having performed on organ, piano and harpsichord with artists such as Thomas Hampson, Itzhak Perlman, Jennifer Larmore, Rachel Barton Pine, the American Boychoir (James Litton, conductor), the St. Thomas Choir (John Scott, conductor), and at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. His 16 solo organ recordings can be found on the labels Acis Productions, JAV Recordings, Aeolus, Naxos, Organum and Ethereal, and are available from the Organ Historical Society (www.ohscatalog.org), JAV Recordings (www.pipeorgancds.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.com).
His commercial release The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux on Aeolus Recordings, received the 2009 Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Germany’s premier critic’s prize for recordings, as well as the French 5 Diapason award. Stephen Tharp plays St. Bavo, Haarlem, The Netherlands on the JAV label was called “the most beautiful CD of 2009” by Resmusica in France, and his Acis Productions release The St. James’ Recital was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Stephen Tharp earned his BA degree, magna cum laude, from Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL and his MM from Northwestern University, Chicago, where he studied with Rudolf Zuiderveld and Wolfgang Rübsam, respectively. He has also worked privately with Jean Guillou in Paris.
Program Notes
(by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah)
What his ubiquitous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is to the organ, Bach’s “Chromatic” Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903, is to the harpsichord. The piece almost certainly started as an improvisation. Some believe it originated during a 1717 recital in Dresden as Bach celebrated his default “victory” over the absent Louis Marchand. Others suspect a later genesis in 1720 as a tombeau for his first wife Maria Barbara, who had just suddenly died at 36. A century later Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Brahms perpetuated the work as a demonstration of piano virtuosity and expressiveness. Max Reger reworked the piece for organ, and the arrangement heard this evening is by Stephen Tharp himself. The Fantasy is a masterful display of stylus phantasticus as Bach “assaults tonality” by modulating through all the keys from the home key of D minor to A-flat major and as far as B major. It begins with a “pair of lightning bolts”–a surge of ascending and descending D minor scales–followed by “the ebb and flow of the storm” wending from one tonal center to another by way of dazzling figurations and passagework. A half-cadence gives a brief pause before pyrotechnics even more spectacular than those at the beginning explode into a series of modulating arpeggiated block chords. The music suddenly stops, and a Recitativ section presents a single line singing a plaintive, ornamented melody accompanied by abrupt, sighing chords. The Fantasy concludes with one of Bach’s most extraordinary inventions as the upper voices descend chromatically in diminished seventh chords, all over a repeated pedal D. After so much virtuosity, the fugue forms a dignified ending in strict 3/4 time. The majestic subject comprises two chromatically-filled ascending minor thirds propelled rhythmically by a countersubject of figura corta (long-short-short figures).
In 1864 Franck premiered his Prière in C-sharp Minor, the fifth of Six Pièces d'Orgue, at Sainte-Clotilde, the church where he was organist from 1862 until his death. It is his most profound and difficult organ work. Once dubbed a “meditation on torment,” it achieves an exquisite balance of musical interest and devotional atmosphere. The opening Andantino sostenuto is a brooding, five-voice (recall Franck’s enormous hands) exposition of the three main themes which are developed antiphonally and in triplet figures. The central Quasi recitative section provides a welcome relaxing of tension as the Trompette stop twice calls out a single line with great freedom followed by a polyphonic reply. The melody becomes more animated before a recapitulation of the themes in a tightly woven six-part contrapuntal fabric, described in the words of Franck’s student Tournemire as possessing an “intensity of expression [that] envelops itself in flames.” A set of ascending scales leads to the concluding sequences, linked by dramatic recitatives, that disappear into the gloom of a descending scale.
André Fleury was born in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine and trained at the Paris Conservatory under Gigout, Vierne, and Dupré. In 1930 Fleury succeeded Jean Huré as organist of Saint-Augustin in Paris. For health reasons he moved south to Dijon in 1948 where he served as organist at the Cathedral of Saint-Bénigne and taught at the conservatory. In 1971 he returned to Paris and worked as co-organist at Saint-Eustache with Jean Guillou. Fleury was a brilliant player of whom Vierne remarked: “Without the slightest apparent effort, he makes light of the most difficult things and interprets the great repertoire as a consummate artist.” Predictably, Fleury composed many difficult, regrettably seldom-played, organ compositions that forge a link between the post-romantic school of Vierne, the symphonic and polyphonic styles of Dupré, and the language of innovators like Messiaen, Langlais, and Alain. His cyclical three-movement Prelude, Andante and Toccata is his masterpiece and the most played of his long works, being commended for its formal unity in the 1932 composition competition of Les Amis de l’Orgue. The Prelude, cast in ABABA form, is marked Très lent. An improvisatory theme (A) sounds in the tenor, accompanied by a sixteenth-note ostinato. Then appears an isorhythmic interlude (B) in 5 time on the Swell Voix célestes. The A theme returns in a modulatory treatment, is interrupted by the B material, and is finally heard in the soprano in the original key fading into an open fifth. The Andante opens with a classical eight-bar theme on a reed in the pedal, followed by a four-part fugue based on the ostinato figure of the Prelude. The two themes combine as the movement ends. The “sunny and jazzy” Toccata takes up the themes of the two previous movements in a complete transformation of their character. From the first measure, the Prelude theme is incorporated in the fiery manual figuration, even before it occurs in the pedal. The themes are developed imitatively and then sound simultaneously to finish the Toccata.
Texas native George C. Baker studied organ with Robert Anderson at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. After winning the 1970 AGO Competition in Organ Playing, Baker moved to Paris from 1973–1975 for further instruction with Pierre Cochereau, Jean Langlais, André Marchal, and Marie-Claire Alain. He won the 1974 Chartres competition and returned home, completing his doctorate in organ at the University of Michigan in 1979 and then teaching at Catholic University in Washington, DC for two years. Ever the peripatetic, he earned a medical degree and worked as a dermatologist from 1991–2020. In his retirement, he teaches organ improvisation at SMU. Prière Grégorienne was composed for Stephen Tharp, who premiered the work at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on August 28, 2018, only a few months before the devastating April 2019 fire. It is a multisectional paraphrase of seven Gregorian chants, several to the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a prayer might contain several ideas, the sections of the piece portray different moods, each reflecting a chant text. An appearance of Dies irae in the central Agitato section brings to mind human frailty and mortality, while Ubi caritas provides comfort: “Where true charity is, God is there.”
In this his sesquicentennial year, Reger is now regarded by many as the greatest German composer of organ music since Bach; however, at age 25 he was a professional and financial failure and returned to his parents’ home in Weiden. While there, Reger (a Catholic who was excommunicated for marrying a Protestant) succumbed to his lifelong fascination with Lutheran chorales and composed his seven chorale fantasies for organ. The two chorale fantasies of Opus 40 were composed in 1899. On June 24, 1900, Reger’s nineteen-year-old friend, Otto Burkert, premiered the second fantasy based on Straf, mich nicht in deinem Zorn [Do Not Punish Me in Your Anger]. Reger uses complex chromatic and contrapuntal techniques to programmatically depict six stanzas of the chorale text (based on Psalm 6) styled as contrasting partita variations. Characteristically, the fantasy begins with a short, free introduction in which the opening pedal notes present a motif of three descending chromatic notes symbolizing fear, distress, and regret; these alone unify the entire work. (Interestingly, the motif disappears in the final verse of praise.) After the introduction, the first variation quietly exposes the chorale melody against an unwieldy five- and six-voice accompaniment. In sudden contrast, the second variation begins like the turbulent climax of a passacaglia with the tune in the pedal. Reger adds short interludes between the remaining verses which, unchained from the cantus firmus, create a sort of continuous free improvisation within the fantasy, paving the way to a grandiose conclusion.
(by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah)
What his ubiquitous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is to the organ, Bach’s “Chromatic” Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903, is to the harpsichord. The piece almost certainly started as an improvisation. Some believe it originated during a 1717 recital in Dresden as Bach celebrated his default “victory” over the absent Louis Marchand. Others suspect a later genesis in 1720 as a tombeau for his first wife Maria Barbara, who had just suddenly died at 36. A century later Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Brahms perpetuated the work as a demonstration of piano virtuosity and expressiveness. Max Reger reworked the piece for organ, and the arrangement heard this evening is by Stephen Tharp himself. The Fantasy is a masterful display of stylus phantasticus as Bach “assaults tonality” by modulating through all the keys from the home key of D minor to A-flat major and as far as B major. It begins with a “pair of lightning bolts”–a surge of ascending and descending D minor scales–followed by “the ebb and flow of the storm” wending from one tonal center to another by way of dazzling figurations and passagework. A half-cadence gives a brief pause before pyrotechnics even more spectacular than those at the beginning explode into a series of modulating arpeggiated block chords. The music suddenly stops, and a Recitativ section presents a single line singing a plaintive, ornamented melody accompanied by abrupt, sighing chords. The Fantasy concludes with one of Bach’s most extraordinary inventions as the upper voices descend chromatically in diminished seventh chords, all over a repeated pedal D. After so much virtuosity, the fugue forms a dignified ending in strict 3/4 time. The majestic subject comprises two chromatically-filled ascending minor thirds propelled rhythmically by a countersubject of figura corta (long-short-short figures).
In 1864 Franck premiered his Prière in C-sharp Minor, the fifth of Six Pièces d'Orgue, at Sainte-Clotilde, the church where he was organist from 1862 until his death. It is his most profound and difficult organ work. Once dubbed a “meditation on torment,” it achieves an exquisite balance of musical interest and devotional atmosphere. The opening Andantino sostenuto is a brooding, five-voice (recall Franck’s enormous hands) exposition of the three main themes which are developed antiphonally and in triplet figures. The central Quasi recitative section provides a welcome relaxing of tension as the Trompette stop twice calls out a single line with great freedom followed by a polyphonic reply. The melody becomes more animated before a recapitulation of the themes in a tightly woven six-part contrapuntal fabric, described in the words of Franck’s student Tournemire as possessing an “intensity of expression [that] envelops itself in flames.” A set of ascending scales leads to the concluding sequences, linked by dramatic recitatives, that disappear into the gloom of a descending scale.
André Fleury was born in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine and trained at the Paris Conservatory under Gigout, Vierne, and Dupré. In 1930 Fleury succeeded Jean Huré as organist of Saint-Augustin in Paris. For health reasons he moved south to Dijon in 1948 where he served as organist at the Cathedral of Saint-Bénigne and taught at the conservatory. In 1971 he returned to Paris and worked as co-organist at Saint-Eustache with Jean Guillou. Fleury was a brilliant player of whom Vierne remarked: “Without the slightest apparent effort, he makes light of the most difficult things and interprets the great repertoire as a consummate artist.” Predictably, Fleury composed many difficult, regrettably seldom-played, organ compositions that forge a link between the post-romantic school of Vierne, the symphonic and polyphonic styles of Dupré, and the language of innovators like Messiaen, Langlais, and Alain. His cyclical three-movement Prelude, Andante and Toccata is his masterpiece and the most played of his long works, being commended for its formal unity in the 1932 composition competition of Les Amis de l’Orgue. The Prelude, cast in ABABA form, is marked Très lent. An improvisatory theme (A) sounds in the tenor, accompanied by a sixteenth-note ostinato. Then appears an isorhythmic interlude (B) in 5 time on the Swell Voix célestes. The A theme returns in a modulatory treatment, is interrupted by the B material, and is finally heard in the soprano in the original key fading into an open fifth. The Andante opens with a classical eight-bar theme on a reed in the pedal, followed by a four-part fugue based on the ostinato figure of the Prelude. The two themes combine as the movement ends. The “sunny and jazzy” Toccata takes up the themes of the two previous movements in a complete transformation of their character. From the first measure, the Prelude theme is incorporated in the fiery manual figuration, even before it occurs in the pedal. The themes are developed imitatively and then sound simultaneously to finish the Toccata.
Texas native George C. Baker studied organ with Robert Anderson at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. After winning the 1970 AGO Competition in Organ Playing, Baker moved to Paris from 1973–1975 for further instruction with Pierre Cochereau, Jean Langlais, André Marchal, and Marie-Claire Alain. He won the 1974 Chartres competition and returned home, completing his doctorate in organ at the University of Michigan in 1979 and then teaching at Catholic University in Washington, DC for two years. Ever the peripatetic, he earned a medical degree and worked as a dermatologist from 1991–2020. In his retirement, he teaches organ improvisation at SMU. Prière Grégorienne was composed for Stephen Tharp, who premiered the work at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on August 28, 2018, only a few months before the devastating April 2019 fire. It is a multisectional paraphrase of seven Gregorian chants, several to the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a prayer might contain several ideas, the sections of the piece portray different moods, each reflecting a chant text. An appearance of Dies irae in the central Agitato section brings to mind human frailty and mortality, while Ubi caritas provides comfort: “Where true charity is, God is there.”
In this his sesquicentennial year, Reger is now regarded by many as the greatest German composer of organ music since Bach; however, at age 25 he was a professional and financial failure and returned to his parents’ home in Weiden. While there, Reger (a Catholic who was excommunicated for marrying a Protestant) succumbed to his lifelong fascination with Lutheran chorales and composed his seven chorale fantasies for organ. The two chorale fantasies of Opus 40 were composed in 1899. On June 24, 1900, Reger’s nineteen-year-old friend, Otto Burkert, premiered the second fantasy based on Straf, mich nicht in deinem Zorn [Do Not Punish Me in Your Anger]. Reger uses complex chromatic and contrapuntal techniques to programmatically depict six stanzas of the chorale text (based on Psalm 6) styled as contrasting partita variations. Characteristically, the fantasy begins with a short, free introduction in which the opening pedal notes present a motif of three descending chromatic notes symbolizing fear, distress, and regret; these alone unify the entire work. (Interestingly, the motif disappears in the final verse of praise.) After the introduction, the first variation quietly exposes the chorale melody against an unwieldy five- and six-voice accompaniment. In sudden contrast, the second variation begins like the turbulent climax of a passacaglia with the tune in the pedal. Reger adds short interludes between the remaining verses which, unchained from the cantus firmus, create a sort of continuous free improvisation within the fantasy, paving the way to a grandiose conclusion.