MUSIC REVIEW : Jean Guillou in Organ Recital at Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral

Jean Guillou is clearly an organist of rare integrity and imagination. His stern, compact program Friday evening at the Crystal Cathedral made scant concession to the popular vapidities of his instrument.

The 57-year-old organist from St. Eustache in Paris did not hesitate to shake whatever passes for rafters in the glass-and-scaffolding building, opening up the huge resident instrument to its full and thunderous glory on several sustained, ear-wilting occasions. Nor did he flinch from the judicious use of some of the instrument’s less mellifluous stops, in performances of uncompromising grandeur.

After a demanding sequence of major works, all in minor keys, Guillou was handed the theme from “Dynasty” for improvisation. That too quickly grew into a serious, sprawling fantasy, worked up mainly from the opening interval in stock fanfares, true, but still an imposing demonstration of an important skill now largely neglected among classical musicians.

Working from memory throughout--another feat no longer common among organists--Guillou began with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543. He gave the Prelude a solid feeling of granite purpose, but played the Fugue so fast, in such a brassy registration, that contrapuntal clarity evaporated in the snarling sonic blaze.

The Fantasia in F minor, K. 608, which Mozart wrote for a mechanical organ, is not a little piece in either length or inspiration. In terms of sound, however, it should be considerably more restrained than the Lisztian epic Guillou produced.

In Franck’s Chorale in B minor and Vierne’s Second Symphony, Guillou focused the rhetoric and exploited the abundant instrumental resources carefully, without abating the sense of emotional urgency. Where others find only Franco-Romantic pabulum, Guillou uncovered tense drama and impassioned monologues.