MUSIC REVIEW : Organist Is the Virtuoso of Overkill

With due respect to Mae West, too much of a good thing is not always wonderful. Organist Anthony Newman, that champion of keyboard excess, confirmed this conclusion as he relentlessly rattled the rafters of San Diego’s First United Methodist Church on Sunday night.

One toccata may be thrilling, but five in a row devalues the form and numbs the ear. Even Newman acknowledged that his program as printed was unbalanced when he announced that he would interpolate the modestly scaled J. S. Bach “Pastorale” after the Charles-Marie Widor Symphony No. 8 and before his own recently composed Symphony No. 2.

There is no debating Newman’s virtuoso technique. He tamed the daunting digital demands of the Widor (he played the three flashiest movements of the work’s seven) with strength to spare, and he elicited majestic sonorities from the church’s massive 107-rank organ. But even the late, great showman of the pipe organ, Virgil Fox, had more than one musical trick in his bag.

Newman, however, is the Johnny-one-note of razzle-dazzle. His approach to Cesar Franck’s “Grande Piece Symphonique” celebrated its grandiose aspirations but failed to find any sense of repose in the languorous themes of the slow movement.

Newman’s Symphony No. 2 for Organ, which, he announced, had been premiered last week in San Francisco, sounded like an overlong improvisation padded with neo-romantic cliches. Marcel Dupre, the last of the great French organ symphony composers, spoke this musical vocabulary with greater eloquence and structural integrity 70 years ago. Even if there is a dearth of serious contemporary organ music, Newman’s Symphony No. 2 is unlikely to assuage it.

As a prelude to his organ recital, Newman played four major J. S. Bach works on the pedal harpsichord in the church’s adjacent Linder Hall. Most scholars claim this odd instrument was used by the organists of Bach’s era as a practice instrument. Few have asserted, however, that the raucous-sounding beast was intended for concert performance, although E. Power Biggs sold a lot of recordings of Scott Joplin rags played on the pedal harpsichord.

Newman’s Bach offerings--the Chromatic Fantasy, the A Minor Prelude and Fugue, the Italian Concerto and the C Minor Passacaglia and Fugue--were all fast and furious. There is much to be mined in Bach’s extensive keyboard repertory. Too bad Newman only finds finger-breaking etudes.