(Sorry for another dinky picture.)Clay Christiansen, organ
Klavier K 11044
- Louis Vierne: Finale from Symphony No. 1, Op. 14
- Robert Elmore: Rhythmic Suite--Pavane
- Camille Saint-Saens: Prelude and Fugue in B, Op. 99, No. 2
- Dmitri Kabalevsky: Variations, Op. 40, No. 1
- Felix Mendelssohn: Sonata in A, Op. 65, No. 3
- Edvard Grieg: Peer Gynt--Morning Mood
- Will C. MacFarlane: Reverie
- Bach: Toccata and Fugue in d minor, BWV 565
- Bach: Arioso from Cantata No. 156 / Harpsichord Concerto in F, BWV 1057
- Robert Hebble: Rejoice!--Toccatino con Rico Tino
- Julius Reubke: Sonata on Psalm 94
- Clay Christiansen: Improvisations on All Through the Night' and 'Come, Come Ye Saints'
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I'm a little surprised that so famous an organ as that in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City (well, famous for a pipe organ) is not better represented in the recording catalog. I have in my collection only two CDs, both by tabernacle organist John Longhurst, recorded a couple decades ago on two different labels. The instrument has been heard for years on radio accompanying the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and is featured on a much larger roster of recordings of the famous choir. But there's almost nothing in the way of solo recordings.
After seeing the organ in person at the Tabernacle, I went across the street to the institutional gift shop to see about any recordings available, and found only two of the organ solo, one of which I already had. The new one, a 2000 CD on the Klavier label, features another of the tabernacle's staff organists, Clay Christiansen, playing a variety of accepted standards--Mendelssohn, Bach, Vierne, Saint-Saens and Reubke--as well as some newer, lesser known things by Robert Elmore, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Will C. MacFarlane and Robert Hebble, plus a couple improvisations by Mr. Christiansen to finish the program off. Call me hopelessly elitist, but these newer works seem chosen more for their accessibility than their intellectual merit, though I'll allow that they let Mr. Christiansen show off some of the other tonal resources of the organ. Well, I'll give them some time: maybe they'll grow on me.
The organ was built by the Aeolian-Skinner firm in 1947, under the direction of the firm's president and tonal director, G. Donald Harrison, who considered the organ his masterwork. I've written a bit about the poignant story of Ernest M. Skinner's ouster from the company that bore his name, and his replacement by Harrison. Harrison was an employee and protegé of organbuilder Henry Willis of Liverpool; Willis was, in turn, a personal friend of Ernest M. Skinner. My sense from Dorothy Holden's Skinner biography is that Harrison's takeover of the firm wasn't really a surprise to anyone except Skinner himself; that is, perhaps Willis offered Harrison to the Skinner firm in a conscientious attempt by Willis to gain control of the firm. Whatever the truth of the allegation, the transition of the company from Skinner's to Harrison's control occurred quite rapidly. The fact was that Harrison's ideas were much more closely aligned with changing popular tastes than Skinner's, and Skinner was unable to adjust his thinking to accommodate. This Salt Lake instrument is the embodiment of what Harrison wanted the Skinner organ to become, and whatever the tempestuous lineage, it's an impressive achievement.
It's ironic that the most famous instrument still to bear Skinner's name is one which had no input from him whatsoever. Indeed, he was over a decade out of his own shop at that point. The forceful move in public taste away from orchestral imitation and toward advanced use of mixtures and mutations resulted in a kind of hybrid instrument, one with Skinner's mechanical advances and certain sonic concepts, but with Harrison's more forward-looking tonal designs. The pity is that the man who was taken under Skinner's wing and mentored could not find, or at least judiciously attribute, merit in Skinner's own work, and was apparently not able to provide custodianship--gentle or otherwise--to these forbears even as he steered the company down a new road. Indeed, he seemed to lead the charge to undo Skinner's work. And yet, the market wants what it wants.
And in a further irony--and, I suppose, an ultimate vindication of the view that Skinner's time was well and truly past--G. Donald Harrison himself was able to keep the wolves at bay only so long. The American Classic organ was fading rapidly in popular estimation year by year, and Harrison staved off the decline only a bit. The Aeolian-Skinner firm closed its doors altogether in 1971 (though Harrison was a decade in the ground by this time; Skinner outlived him). Customers wanted not a new version of the American Classic organ, but one unabashedly imitative of a North German instrument of 200 years before. In a sense, the thing that Ernest Skinner most hated was what in fact came to pass: the buying public sought out in ever-increasing numbers the European firms who were extrapolating from the state of the organ at the time of Bach's death. Those remaining firms who could adapt did so, and those who couldn't perished. From that radical rethinking, the industry stepped WAY back and moved forward from that point, thereby effectively repudiating much of what modernity had brought to the instrument.
Not surprisingly, the public determined later that perhaps a wholesale revision was not needed, so much as an adjustment. Few people are building Skinner-like instruments today, but a modern instrument like the Fisks at Oberlin or in the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, or the Dobson organ reviewed below; these are much closer to a Harrison Skinner than to the Flentrops and Marcussens and Brombaughs that were in vogue for a while in the '50s and '60s. Still, one sees things from both schools in many modern organs.
Though it's different in tonal character from Cavaillé-Coll's work, the suitability of the Tabernacle Aeolian-Skinner to the Romantic and post-Romantic French literature makes me wonder why more people have not come here to make recordings. Martin Jean's recent recordings on the Woolsey Hall Skinner at Yale of Vierne and Tournemire (plus Charles Krigbaum's Widor recordings on that same instrument) show off this music fantastically well. I'd love to see someone record all of Duruflé or some Vierne symphonies on the Salt Lake organ.
But for now we have Clay Christiansen giving us a taste of what the instrument is capable of. For that I'm grateful.
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