MUSIC REVIEWS : Swann Shows the Power, Glory of Cathedral Organ

The 16,412 pipes and 268 ranks of the Crystal Cathedral’s Hazel Wright organ--which reportedly make it the second-largest fully functional organ in existence--can easily seduce a performer into a gratuitous display of power.

Friday night, however, director of music and artist-in-residence Frederick Swann returned briefly from a summer sabbatical in a recital that avoided this pitfall, and tapped the potential of the instrument without compromising the musical integrity of his program.

The agenda highlighted the versatility of its mammoth vehicle. “Postlude for the Office of Compline,” by Jehan Alain--the French organist and composer who died at age 29, in World War II--floated its Gregorian melodies and romantic harmonies, all delicately registered, in quiet reverie.

Among the strongest works in terms of effect and sonic forcefulness, Cesar Franck’s B-minor Chorale received an intelligent, deliberately paced and rhythmically precise performance that came to an exciting, yet stylistically attentive, reed-dominated climax.

Judging by the degree of earth-shaking volume, though not necessarily of musical merit, the Franck work was bested by the last programmed piece: Healey Willan’s Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue. Generally recognized as the Canadian composer’s most notable composition in this genre, it is bound to leave a lasting impression through an almost relentlessly growing density that culminated here, in its final variation, with a massive encircling aural assault. Swann achieved particularly tense excitement as he unraveled the intricacies of the fugue that preceded it.

Variations comprised a major part of the evening. Calvin Hampton’s thorny, sometimes eerie set, his Prelude and Variations on “Old 100th,” offered the most technical challenges.

Still, although Swann informed the audience that he had played it in public only once before--as part of International Organ Week, in Nuremberg last month--he worked his way capably through a thick fabric of wandering obbligatos and emerging countermelodies and managed to surround his listeners with a big enough wall of sound that they apparently forgave him the moments of bitonality in an otherwise traditional-minded program.