2009-11-15 - St Thomas Church, NY - H DUTEIL - 15 nov - 17h15

Hervé Duteil, guest organist à St Ignatius Loyola

Saint-Thomas Church, 5th Avenue, New York

Program -

On the Loening-Hancock Organ (Taylor & Boody, 1996) :

Nikolaus Bruhns (1665-1697) - Praeludium in E minor (“The Great”)


On the Arents Memorial Organ (Skinner, 1913 / Aeloian-Skinner, 1956):

Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901 ) - Sonata VIII in E minor
- Introduktion
- Passacaglia

Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) - Symphonie Gothique, op. 70
- Moderato
- Andante Sostenuto

Charles Tournemire (1870-1939) - Improvisation sur le Te Deum (reconstructed by Maurice Duruflé)

Très bien !
Surtout Rheinberger que l'on entend si peu en concert (en fait on peut même dire jamais... ici).

Et tes impressions sur l'orgue ??
(oui je sais il est superbe, mais à part ça ?)

Le Taylor & Boody est magnifique, meme si un peu difficile a jouer en premiere fois... Sensible comme un clavecin... Mais quel bonheur...

Le Skinner est tres beau, mais il faut s'arreter aux premiers rangs de mixtures. De nombreux plans sonores avec lesquels on peut jouer... des fonds, des gambes, des anches... des mutations egalement... et puis un peu de piment de temps en temps avec les chamades en tribune...

Le tout dans une acoustique genereuse... et une architecture sublime...

Voilà un critique qui ne mâche pas ses mots :

Citation :

Herve Duteil trained as a classical organist, along the way winning and later judging international competitions. His dayjob appears to be finance, along with a position at NGO relief organization Fidesco USA. Good thing he hasn’t given up his other job as a concert performer: his recital at St. Thomas on the fifteenth was blissfully intense.

Many of us have groused about how performers not only in classical but also in jazz will follow a rousing piece with a composition which is 180 degrees the opposite. And which makes a horrible segue. Why? To give themselves a breather? To offer a study in contrasts? Too frequently, this device seems to be a cop-out – and vive Duteil for not doing it. He kicked off the evening on the rear organ, designed and tuned especially for the baroque and composers of the North German School. Pulling out all the stops, he turned this usually understated instrument into a force of menace with Nicholas Bruhns’ Praeludium in E Minor (this link offers a decent version but one that can’t compare with the vigor and good cheer that Duteil served up).

Moving to the redoubtable Skinner organ at the front of the church, he then lit into German Romantic composer Josef Rheinberger’s Sonata No. 8 in E Minor. Opening with a full-bore plein jeu attack, the piece builds to an extremely clever tradeoff between its initial waltz theme and the dramatic, straightforward stomp that follows. It ended as ferociously as it had began. Duteil then pulled back, but just a little, for the Moderato and then the Andante Sostenuto of Charles Widor’s Symphonie Gothique (which is actually pretty far from what we think of as gothic.) Sturm und drang from a distance built to a little real sturm und drang, followed by marvelously nuanced, nebulously muted cantabile disquiet. The program closed with Charles Tournemire’s famous Improvisation sur le Te Deum, all high-pressure fluid dynamics and dramatic counterpoint. It’s a showstopper, and in Duteil’s hands brought what was already a powerful performance to a wall-shaking crescendo. Duteil is no stranger to this venue; hopefully he’ll be back, before the old Skinner (ostensibly in disrepair but sounding no worse for the wear and tear of almost a century) gets pulled off the wall and replaced.

Bravo Hervé !