From power to grace, Bruns conjures spirituality, grandeur
Felix Mendelssohn gets credit for a fair number of things: He was one of the folks who more or less resurrected the music of Johann Sebastian Bach from the dustbin of history, but he also wrote a goodly number of piano scores and created the incidental music for Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — including the famous “Wedding March,” a standard at countless nuptials.
Mendelssohn also wrote popular symphonies, oratorios, chamber music and, for the purposes of this review, organ music, arguably the least known and least performed bits in the composer’s catalog.
Friday night, Jeremy Bruns’ Lippes Concert Hall recital was a great argument for hearing these neglected pieces more often.
Perhaps neglected is the wrong word, because classical organists have been familiar with these scores and played them for well over a century. But it still seems that these works aren’t heard enough. It’s hard to fault organ programs featuring Bach, Handel, Franck and Widor, all staples of the repertoire, but surely there is more room for Mendelssohn than what he is allotted.
When Bruns hit the majestic opening notes of Mendelssohn’s A major Organ Sonata (op. 65, no. 3), the mighty Fisk organ delivered a massive volume of sound that gave life to the composer’s work. Then, in the concluding slow movement of the sonata, the hushed, reverent lushness of the writing found full expression under the organist’s hands.
As the first half of the concert came to a close with an exhilarating rendition of the “Allegro, Chorale and Fugue,” in D major, the final notes hung in the air, fading slowly from power to grace. After the intermission, Bruns raised the sound level again as he hit the opening bars of the third “Prelude and Fugue,” from opus 37.
It was like that for the entire concert. There were moments of grandeur and corresponding moments of pastoral reflection, each balancing the other, tributes to the composer performed nearly impeccably by the organist.
Cast in shadows with beams of light focusing on the organ pipes, the whole event had an ethereal, almost spiritual, feel to it, even when the instrument was operating at full bore.
If your exposure to classical organ music is limited to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the one heard in the “Phantom of the Opera” movie and dragged out to underline horror every Halloween, then you need to experience the power and glory of the pipe organ at its best and in the hands of Bruns, a master technician.
Concert Review
Jeremy Bruns
Organ recital on Friday evening in Slee Hall, University at Buffalo, Amherst.
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