MUSIC REVIEW : Recital Fails to Test Range of Cathedral’s Organ

In his congenial remarks to the audience, organist Peter Sweeney conceded that the Crystal Cathedral’s nearly 16,000-pipe organ made him feel “very small” but that he was thrilled to be there Friday, as a part of the church’s summer series of organ recitals. Oddly, his program consisted largely of second-rate Romantic works but works, he asserted, that would allow him take advantage of the cathedral’s huge instrument.

Ironically, Sweeney did not fully exploit the timbre, dynamic and antiphonal capacities of the 28-rank Hazel Wright Organ until the final work, Marcel Dupre’s Prelude and Fugue in B. The virtuosic composition proved an effective showcase for both instrument and organist and also was the most musically substantive installment of the relatively short program.

Also satisfying were two works by Jehan Alain, both of which provided welcome contrast to some of the bombast that preceded. “Two Dances of Agni Yavishta” gave Sweeney a chance to evoke an exotic, Oriental flavor; the neo-Renaissance style of the Variations on a Theme of Clement Jannequin allowed the organist to focus on melodic contour.

Sweeney, the organist at Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin, made a strong case for Alexander Guilmant’s “Grand Choeur” in D by effecting maximum dynamic contrasts and artful changes in registration. With large organs there is always the temptation to use more stops than necessary, thereby obfuscating contrapuntal lines; Sweeney avoided this and offered a clear, focused performance.

The rest of the recital proved less satisfying. Victorians William Thomas Best and Henry Smart were organists first, composers second, and their music sounds that way. Nevertheless, Sweeney brought impressive color and grandeur to Best’s March in D and Smart’s Postlude in D. (D major, and major keys in general, were over-represented Friday evening.)

“The Answer,” by William Wolstenholme (also an organist of Victorian England) proved a naive, forgettable exercise in maudlin Romanticism. Cesar Franck’s “Cantabile” from his “Trois Pieces” (1878) was hardly more interesting, notwithstanding Sweeney’s resourceful deployment of color. The Irish organist also gave a bland reading of Guilmant’s arrangement of “The Swan” from Saint-Saens’s “Carnival of the Animals.”