Silliness, Contrasts Part of Delightful Show

She’s got on a nice cream outfit, with red fringe and lots of gold decoration. He is wooden in brown, not interested in fashion. She’s giddy, an attention-getter showing off her flashy moves. He’s into weighty, serious matters. Her passion is theater; he is at home at church. Although of the same age and with more in common than one might first imagine, they would not normally think of spending a night together. They simply are never at the same place at the same time. But Tuesday they were.

He is the grand Skinner organ installed in Royce Hall in 1930 and this season finally back in operation after a five-year restoration following the 1994 Northridge earthquake. She is the George Wright Signature Series Theatre Organ from the ‘30s, a digitally sampled electronic version of a ‘30s instrument replete with percussion effects.

Together the two stood on stage Tuesday night--UCLA organist Thomas Harmon at his machine, local theater organist Lyn Larsen at the Wright--as part of the series inaugurating the imposing Royce organ’s reinstalling.

The evening, which had been billed as something of a battle of the organs, was far more a love match. That was a good thing, too, since the program, which was announced by the two organists as they went along, tended toward the frivolous. And when light music sets the tone, the gaudy sound effects of the Wright and its bright electronic timbre tends to attract most of the attention.

It might even have been called the Tom and Lyn Show. Both men looking the part in white dinner jackets with red vests (Larsen’s appropriately sequined) began with Bach’s famous D-Minor Toccata (minus fugue), trading phrases back and forth, but they delighted most in novelty numbers.

Explaining that both instruments were built at a time when phonograph recordings were in their infancy and before every community had its symphony, Harmon described how organs such as these often served to introduce audiences to orchestral music. An example was a transcription of the Largo movement from Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, although with churchy diapson it can make the instrument seem outdated. But that was quickly forgotten with Larsen’s wacky if equally anachronistic response--”Abba Dabba Honeymoon”--followed by Harmon stepping over to the Wright for his near psychedelic arrangement of “Deep Purple.”

Later there was more effective contrast between the cheerful theater organ sound, in Henry Mancini numbers, and the tremendous power of the deep bass pipes of the Royce organ, featured in a slow movement of the “Chartres” Suite by San Francisco organist Richard Purvis.

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But it was the duets, silly as they sometimes were, that proved the point of the show. The two instruments don’t really go together. The power and pizazz of electronics can dominate, and, of course, the Wright gets all the special effects. But in Bach’s Toccata, the Royce instrument turns the theater organ into tin. Otherwise the Wright added dazzling and amusing colors to the Royce in arrangements of Strauss’ “Voices of Spring” waltz and Von Suppe’s “Poet and Peasant” Overture along with a medley from “My Fair Lady.” And one great organ makes an arresting sound, two big organs together--a once-in-a-lifetime experience--have all the potential for sonic riot.

As a surprise finale, the organists invited the UCLA marching band to join in with Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Washington Post.” The band on stage could overwhelm the organs in sheer volume, but all those massed pipes--be they real or electronic--were an incomparable fantasy of musical color. Two bad it could only be a one-night stand.