David Adams (organ)

St Michael’s Church, Dún Laoghaire

For nearly 10 years now, David Adams has given the final recital in the annual organ series on the Rieger organ of St Michael’s Church.

This year, as is his wont, he constructed his programme with an ingenuity that engaged the mind and the heart as fully as the ear, and delivered his chosen music with a stylish virtuosity that was both unassuming and breathtaking.

On Sunday his focus was on Liszt and Alain. He used Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on BACH (a musical treatment of the letters of Bach's name, which, in German musical nomenclature, yield the theme B flat, A, C, B natural) as an excuse to reach back to Bach (the Prelude and Fugue in G minor, BWV535), as well as on to a Liszt arrangement of a Chopin Prelude and an arrangement of a late piece of Liszt (the forward-looking Bagatelle sans tonalité) by Adams himself.

He marked the centenary of the birth of Jehan Alain (who lost his life aged 29 in 1940 in a gunfight with German soldiers) through memorial pieces by Gaston Litaize ( Diapason, fantaisie sur le nom Jehan Alain), Jean Langlais ( Chant héroïque à la mémoire de Jehan Alain) and Maurice Duruflé ( Prélude et Fugue sur le nom d'Alain) as well as two orientally-influenced pieces by Alain himself ( Deux danses à Agni Yavishtaand Le jardin suspendu).

Adams handled the gothic romanticism of Liszt’s Bach homage with persuasive flamboyance, and his arrangement of the Bagatelle sans tonalité used the organ to highlight the exoticism of the internal clashes which are such a feature of a journey that’s usually left hanging in the air, but which on this occasion was connected with hardly a break (and without applause) to the world of Alain’s dances.

It was fascinating to hear the three Alain tributes in the one programme, Litaize’s notable for its sparkiness, Langlais’s all unstable agitation, and Duruflé’s full of balm by comparison.

Adams gave the impression of being perfectly attuned to every slightest variation in their moods.