Prom 10: Fauré, Franck & Widor’s Toccata - 22.07.18

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

11.00
Royal Albert Hall

Charles‐Marie Widor: Organ Symphony No 5 in F minor: Toccata, Op 42
César Franck: Trois pièces pour grand orgue
Gabriel Fauré: Pavane (arr. Apkalna)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasia in G major, BWV 572 (arr. Arnold Bax)
Sir George Thomas Thalben-Ball: Variations on a Theme by Paganini (A Study for the Pedals)
Thierry Escaich: Deux Évocations

Iveta Apkalna organ



Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna makes her Proms debut with a programme of French 19th- and 20th-century music.
Widor's thrilling Organ Symphony No. 5, with its famous final-movement Toccata, offers sprawling, extrovert drama, a mood it shares with prize-winning French composer-organist Thierry Escaich's exuberant Évocations, with their nods to Baroque and Renaissance music.
Works by Franck and Bach's great G major Fantasia, with its 'wonderful variations and foreign tones', complete the programme given on the Royal Albert Hall's famous 'Father' Willis organ.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Proms listing says only the Toccata of the Widor will be performed, but the BBC Radio 3 schedule suggests otherwise.

[BBMmk2]

Prom 10 Saturday 22/07/2018 Organ Prom

Have. Missed something or there is a thread about this Prom. I’m sure there is. Very good music making indeed

[VodkaDilc]

11.00
Royal Albert Hall

.

It would be difficult to dream up a dafter timing for this Prom. I can imagine the schedulers now: "Lots of organ enthusiasts are church musicians. I know - let's have the Prom at 11am on a Sunday."

A very interesting programme; I'm especially curious about the Bax arrangement of BWV572. I wish I could have gone to the concert.

[jonfan]

Great programme. Wow, that Thalben-Ball. It would have been good to have captured that on video to see the footwork. The Willis came over well and sounding fantastic; great sound engineering. This one will be a good one for binaural feed; hope that happens. [The binaural links are on the Proms site but take some finding; shame they are not live as last year.]

[ARBurton]

Enjoyed listening via R3 but was it really necessary for the announcer to chip in about 1 second after the end of each piece??????????

[jonfan]

Enjoyed listening via R3 but was it really necessary for the announcer to chip in about 1 second after the end of each piece??????????

Martin H is usually the most sensitive of announcers so I presume the programme was very tight to fit in the hour as each piece followed on immediately. That proved to be the case as the encore proved.

[edashtav]

I can’t enthuse over this broadcast: an old-fashioned programme played in an old-fashioned way. I’m old enough to have heard Thalben Ball play his pedal piece live, and Old twinkle toes was very good. I felt that several works just failed to flow: probably the Organist just hadn’t received sufficient rehearsal access to Henry Willis’s monster to have come to terms with its idiosyncrasies.

[mercia]

oops - just before the encore Handley said the organ has 9,999 stops. That would be a handful. The website doesn't say the Bach was arranged though it did seem longer than I remember it, but not at all Baxian to my ears. The iPlayer cuts off before the encore ends which is disappointing.

[pureimagination]

I feel that Iveta Apkalna handled the organ very well. [DON'T!!!]. The problem lay with some of the pieces chosen. The Widor sounding magnificent, shame we couldn't have had the whole of Symphony No.5. The Franck and the Bach [would have loved his more well known Toccata & Fugue] were okay but not memorable. The arrangement of the Pavane to my ears was rather tedious - sounding a bit like those quieter moments in state occasions when something is happening off stage and the organist is filling time - which was a shame as I like Faure's Pavane. The two big surprises were the Sir George Thomas Thalben-Ball arranged Variations on a Theme by Paganini (George looked great in the Proms programme), in a couple places the arrangement reminding me of Prog Rock (it's better elements), and the modern piece by Thierry Escaich. The second movement of the piece evoking the jumping dance of Masai warriors (as it stated in the programme) and I did get that from the piece, which I will be seeking out for further listening.
My only real gripe about the Prom was that though the sound from the Willis organ was magnificent the lighting rig and canopy obscured the view of the upper half of the organ pipes.
One question (as I haven't yet listened to the broadcast). What was the encore piece?

[BBMmk2]

Yes, quite agree with you. Iveta Apkalna played the RAH organ impeccably. I was thinking the same about the choice of programme. Yes, would’ve been good to hear the whole Symphony of W5. The programme should’ve had Vierne in as well.

[Richard J.]

Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasia in G major, BWV 572 (arr. Arnold Bax)

Where did the reference to the Arnold Bax arrangement come from? There's no mention of it in the Proms Guide nor in the programme booklet for this concert nor in the online description of the concert.

The programme mentions that the work's first appearance at the Proms was "in the form of Arnold Bax's abridged arrangement in 1933". Since the piece was written for organ, shortening it would seem to be the only reason for an arrangement. As far as I aware, we had the full original work at this Prom.

[Alain Maréchal]

Where did the reference to the Arnold Bax arrangement come from? There's no mention of it in the Proms Guide nor in the programme booklet for this concert nor in the online description of the concert.

The programme mentions that the work's first appearance at the Proms was "in the form of Arnold Bax's abridged arrangement in 1933". Since the piece was written for organ, shortening it would seem to be the only reason for an arrangement. As far as I aware, we had the full original work at this Prom.

Bax arranged it for piano, for Harriet Cohen, so an editorial error seems probable.

[bluestateprommer]

One question (as I haven't yet listened to the broadcast). What was the encore piece?

It was the "Toccata on the Chorale 'Allein Gott'" by Aivars Kalējs, a compatriot of IA. One good thing that the BBC Proms is doing with its Twitter feed is posting the concert encores pretty much straightaway, which makes archiving in the Forum Calendar much easier when I can't catch it off the bat.

Just finally caught up with this organ recital. To my not-very-well-versed-in-organ-repertoire ears, IA did a very fine job indeed throughout, with my one mild reservation being the somewhat phlegmatic feel of parts of her rendition of Faure's Pavane, in keeping with pureimagination's comment. The Paganini Variations were indeed a nice surprise, as I'd never heard the work before. Escaich's work was also extremely effective.

While the 11 AM start time is perhaps mildly bonkers, one reason may be that the Proms organizers wanted the whole afternoon free for whatever orchestra got rehearsal time for that afternoon. That may well have been the BBC NOW for Mahler 8, at a wild speculative (and unsubstantiated) guess. It would seem more efficient to set up the RAH for Mahler 8 that afternoon, and not mess with it afterwards.

IMHO, I think jonfan got it regarding Martin Handley's uncharacteristic quick follow-ups after each piece, with the need to shoehorn the program into 1 hour, with minimal breaks between each work.

[hmvman]

Just finally caught up with this organ recital. To my not-very-well-versed-in-organ-repertoire ears, IA did a very fine job indeed throughout, with my one mild reservation being the somewhat phlegmatic feel of parts of her rendition of Faure's Pavane, in keeping with pureimagination's comment. The Paganini Variations were indeed a nice surprise, as I'd never heard the work before. Escaich's work was also extremely effective.

Agree, bsp. I wasn't sure that the Fauré really worked as an organ transcription and there seemed something odd about the rhythm in this performance to my ears. That apart though, I thought this was a splendid concert. I very much enjoyed the Escaich work and the encore piece.