MUSIC REVIEW : Organists Offer Works From 20th Century

The organ may well be the king of instruments, but it is a monarch with a notoriously threadbare repertory retinue. Ironically, we were reminded of that sad estate by a generous and stylistically eclectic survey of recent ensemble pieces, presented Monday evening at St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church in San Marino as part of the American Guild of Organists regional convention.

Easily the most distinguished offering was the Sept Chorals for trumpet and organ by Jean Langlais. The French master, who died recently at age 84, assigned the tunes to the trumpet and surrounded them with vivid and varied accompaniments drawing their character from both the musical and textual implications of the chorales.

Trumpeter Chris Allyson Price sustained the soaring lines with burnished nobility and attacked the bravura finale for piccolo trumpet with pointed glee. Organist Philip Allen Smith delivered a fluent effort that proved unduly reticent in registration until the last two chorales, a chromatically anguished “Jesu meine Freude” and joyous variations on “Lobe den Herren.”

Other organists also seemed to find it difficult to make the resident Skinner organ exert much sonic presence. Despite working in tandem on the instrument, Rebecca Evers Davy and Patricia Murphy Lamb were consistently overwhelmed by percussionists Jonathan Graff and Blake Wilkins in Rayner Brown’s six-movement Sonata, an uncharacteristically flamboyant piece that would undoubtedly make a more coherent impression in a more balanced performance.

Davy and Wilkins supplied a better integrated ensemble in Alvin Epstein’s “Dialogus,” an episodic, atonal meditation of inconsistent inspiration. Henk Badings’ blandly Regeresque Canzona also found the Smith-Price duo in full accord.

The kinder, gentler side of the agenda was topped by Conrad Susa’s “Serenade for a Christmas Night,” a flowing reverie on the plainsong “Divinium Mysterium” suavely presented by Lamb, Graff and harpist Marcia Dickstein. Lamb and Dickstein also collaborated smoothly in Marcel Grandjany’s sentimental “Aria in Classic Style” and Daniel Pinkham’s desultory “Pastorale.”

Bach, of course, is the organ’s redeeming light, but the lightweight, familiar Sonata in E-flat for flute and keyboard attributed to him seemed out of place and unnecessary in this context, particularly in the lackluster performance of Leah Morrison and Davy. They combined more pertinently in the impressionistic Rhapsody by John Weaver.