MUSIC REVIEW : Preston Pumps Life Into Crystal Cathedral Organ

An instrument with the potential of the 285-rank monster at the Crystal Cathedral is an object of great envy and wonder to most organists, but it doesn’t play itself. Friday, Simon Preston opened the 1993 International Organ Series with a convincing exploration of all the resources available.

In his fourth recital on the Hazel Wright Organ at the cathedral, the veteran British organist worked effectively with its spatial properties. He contrasted the front and rear divisions nicely in Joseph Bonnet’s “Variations de Concert,” and exploited the horizontal trumpets in the transepts tellingly in Reubke’s monumental “Sonata on the 94th Psalm.”

Indeed, the Reubke sonata seemed made for this room and instrument. Preston built an imposing structure, passionate yet tightly organized and firmly propelled.

Preston’s highly colored Bach, the Prelude and Fugue in D, BWV 532, reminded us that desiccated clarity is not the native acoustic of this music. The results approached Gothic parody, however, as he piled on the stops in the fugue, none too neat even in its restrained opening.

Extracurricular events had a real impact on the proceedings. Preston began while a carillon recital was still in progress outside. The opening thunder of Bonnet’s piece thoroughly overwhelmed those sounds, but when Preston reached the first quiet variation, the quite audible bells introduced a delightfully incongruous Ivesian effect.

Most afflicted, though, was Franck’s Chorale in B minor. First a group of loud-talking people wandered out from behind the choir loft, gaped at the audience and quickly retreated. Then a neighboring attraction began a fireworks show both audible and visible from within the glass house.

Preston played bravely on, concentrating on thematic definition and rather sadly compromised nobility, instead of the hothouse swoonings many organists find appropriate to this repertory.

He projected similar strengths in Tournemier’s Choral-Improvisation on “Victimae Paschali,” moving the music along with articulate dignity.

The organist also offered amiable, somewhat long-winded anecdotage by way of verbal notes. In encore, he turned from the prevailing somber heroics to the ebullient heroics of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” broadly comical here. The fireworks, alas, were already over.