Janette Fishell and the Great Organ at Benaroya Hall
Monday night was a treat at Benaroya Hall, dedicated fully to the demonstration of the great Watjen Concert Organ, a true symphonic hall organ, which is not at all common.
The organist was Janette Fishell and the music was J.S. Bach. In her program notes, Fishell, who teaches at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, divided the concert into four distinct sections. She consolidated aspects of Bach's life and artistic development into the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, and the judge, in what amounted to a thoroughly conceived musicological essay.
As much as we appreciated her intellectual interpretation, we enjoyed her playing even more; besides, Bach is a composer of such magnitude that every listener is bound to develop their own deeply personal view of the music. The following is ours.
The organ is no mere instrument that can be thrown into a case and lugged about; it is not meek, fragile, or subtle, although at time, like a great actor, it may feign to be. It exists exalted, majestic, powerful, a universe of infinite proportion and within this vast expanse of possibility, in that concert hall, there was life, the breath of life exhaled by the great pillar of Western Music, Johann Sebastian Bach. But devout faith and religiosity, made manifest through definition or dogma is not--ironically, but obviously--universal. To each their own belief and so it was that Benaroya Hall, the Church of Bach, was sparsely attended.
The concert opened with the Prelude and Fugue in E major, BWV 566, the prelude of which was a great roar of power, as if a slumbering giant had suddenly stirred and cleared its throat with a declaration of its own dominance. But the fugue that followed was delicate and sublime, and Fishell managed the interweaving of the various contrapuntal lines with remarkable balance and subtlety of phrasing.
Adjusting the stops on the organ, Fishell pronounced the theme from Partite diverse sopra il Corale, "O Gott, du frommer Gott," BWV 767, with a sound quality that was more antiquated before variations arose, one carefully crafted after the other and each with their own profound utterance: eight variations and eight pearls of wisdom.
Jesus, meine Zuversicht, BWV 728, was a brief and beautiful moment of ornamentation and delight, but we pondered in the dalliance of the moment only briefly, then...it was utterly destroyed. The great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542 demonstrated that the full throat of the organ, when the chords are sustained, especially dark, unresolved, diminished chords, is a force of nature, like a powerful wind or the cracking of the earth. The prelude was torment, but also bliss, like Goethe’s sorrowful Werther with the complex profundity of Faust. The conjoining fugue is well known and we are reminded of the excellent recording by E. Power Biggs.
The organist is typically hidden from view, hands playing upon the many manuals and feet stomping along are circus spectacles not always shared, but perhaps they are tucked out of sight because they are vehicles of an unworldly act, like the intrinsic secret behind a well conceived magic trick. At Benaroya Hall, Fishell was visible for all to see, raised above us as if preaching from a pulpit.
Light and dancing melodic figures, rhythmically moving across the keyboard characterized the beginning of Pièce d’Orgue in G major, BWV 572. But Bach was a great conceiver of dualities and contrasted this opening with loud sustain, which began in the major key, but gradually, through a process of inner churning and modulation, buried into a darker tone--an inevitability with much of Bach’s music, and Chopin is similar in this way; the major key tonality is too beautiful to spare. Proportionately, the latter half of the piece was much longer, as if the initial lightness portrayed the mundane world, the trivial and ultimately finite, while the latter half, with its heaviness, was explorative and transcendental, gradually evolving into an otherworldliness that was as bizarre as it was miraculous.
The vocal qualities of Schmücke dich, liebe Seele, BWV 654, were obvious: a meandering and subdued accompaniment with occasional and interspersed and melodies arching above. It was as if an occasional voice was commenting on the hushed constancy of the accompaniment that dwelled below.
A concerto typically signifies a musical ensemble where a soloist is accompanied by an orchestra, but Bach’s Concerto in G major, BWV 529, was utterly self-reliant, embodying all musical roles, soloist and accompanist. The slow second movement of the concerto was particularly noteworthy, not just for its compositional beauty, but for Fishell’s exceptional sensitivity.
Moving quickly from the light-hearted dotted-rhythms, indicative of a French Overture, the drama of Praeludium pro Organo pleno, BWV 552, 1 was unleashed. Bach, the brooding German, quickly injected intensification, created density, complexity--impossible complexity--and yet all the while the apparent chaos was perfectly contained. This was Bach at his most radiant. The interjected Dies sind die heilgen zehen Gebot, BWV 678, was a programmatic reprieve that perhaps some listeners welcomed, but we would have rather conjoined the Prelude and the ensuing Fugue from BWV 552. Let the remarkable density reign and for those with soft ears--please pardon our callous view--let them suffer.
A clever and effective means for straying away from a program that is focused on a single composer is to pay homage to that composer. This is precisely how Fishell ended her concert, with Liszt’s bombastic Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H. The 19th-century flair for the macabre, as expressed by Liszt, was far more obvious and theatrical when compared to the unparalleled and start honesty of Bach. Nevertheless, we were all drawn into Liszt’s phantasmagorical world of demented virtuosity and sleight of hand.
The fugue uttered Bach’s names with a four note melodic shape using the German musical alphabet, B (b-flat), A, C, H (b-natural). As the fugue subject was reiterated it was if Bach was being called forth again and again, each time with more intensity, a kind of pulling your hair out and gnashing your teeth kind of intensity, and still B-A-C-H, B-A-C-H. It became maddening and the homage became a séance. Yet the spirit of Johann Sebastian did not arise and Liszt, apparently defeated, whimpered softly, one last time, b-a-c-h. Silence fell upon the audience and then suddenly, the voice of Bach responded with sheer and constant power, bellowing from the beyond.
Photo by Forrest Croce
