Toccata in C BWV564 - Bach, Schubler Chorales - Bach, Prelude and Fugue in E minor Op 37 No 4 - Hesse, Sonata in C minor - Pescetti, Hommage a Henry Purcell - Petr Eben The closing recital of the 24th annual organ series at St Michael's, Dun Laoghaire, was given on Sunday by Gerard Gillen. Professor Gillen, who has directed this series since its inception, chose a programme which, with typical resourcefulness, mixed the familiar and the unfamiliar.
He opened with Bach, the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue, BWV564, steadily and solidly projected, and the popular set of six Schubler chorales, forthright, unaffected, if at times a bit stark in the highlighting of the chorale melodies.
The most interesting novelty of the evening looked like being the Hommage a Henry Purcell, written by the Czech composer Petr Eben for the Purcell tercentenary of 1995. Sadly, this piece finds the composer (who has seen a number of his earlier organ works successfully enter the repertoire) essaying a bouncy wrong-note style which was far from convincing in a piece which outstayed its welcome.
Adolf Hesse (1809-1863) was a German organist and composer who introduced Bach's organ works to Paris in 1844. The E minor Prelude and Fugue from his Op. 37 moves comfortably in predictable periods in that unchallenging mid-19th-century style which we now associate with the satellites of Mendelssohn.
Giovanni Battista Pescetti (c. 1704-1766) was best known as an opera composer. Curiously, his Sonata in C minor for harpsichord now seems to get most attention from organists and harpists. Gillen obviously relished its light galanterie, and brought to the chromatic turns of the middle movement something of the nostalgia of a Nino Rota score for a Fellini film.
