Olivier Latry , Notre Dame Cathedral organist, started on a light note at the Kimmel, but the audience seemed more interested in what followed.
Fun, intensity at organ recital
No stranger to Philadelphia, the distinguished Notre Dame Cathedral organist Olivier Latry brought unexpected levity to his eagerly anticipated return to the Kimmel Center: He inaugurated the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ in 2006, and his status in France - home of one of Europe's great organ cultures - suggested his recital on Saturday afternoon would be of utmost seriousness. Instead, the slight, boyish-looking Latry began the concert with what normally be encores - transcriptions of Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance and Falla's Ritual Fire Dance that showed off some of the instrument's more garish possibilities.
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
Been there, done that. The audience showed far more interest in somewhat challenging 20th-century works that followed, such as Deuxième Fantaisie by Jehan Alain and Toccata by Jean Guillou, suggesting that those who give their Saturday afternoon to an organ recital aren't there to hear the instrument be an orchestral ventriloquist. Also, Latry's manner was markedly different: Though organists aren't often considered passionate - they're so busy manipulating the instrument - the performances had the music's elements coloristically chiseled in high definition.
The 1936 Fantaisie illustrated Alain's belief that "What matters in music is less charm than mystery," and it speaks well for Latry to say that the melodic quirkiness and ill-fitting parts were strongly felt from this intriguing, little-known composer who died at age 30. In his 1970 Toccata, Guillou plunged down numerous rabbit holes, all busy and interesting, none remotely alike but all with a clear connections to one another.
Louis-Nicolas Clérambault's Suite No. 2, with its 18th-century harmony-dictated anti-melodies, played well off of Sigfrid Karg-Elert's salon/cabaret- flavored tunes, written roughly two centuries later, in Valse Mignonne. Latry gave them a full-voiced treatment that seemed odd with the more intimate, miniaturist older composer and attempted suaveness in the more recent music - giving you more to think about beyond the actual music. Better documentation in the program book would have encouraged that positive tendency.
The concert's finale was an improvisation on prescribed themes including the Puccini aria "Un bel di": Smiling broadly (which was apparent on Verizon Hall's welcome video screens), Latry broke the melodies down to punchy little cells and transformed them in different registers with intriguingly obsessive repetition. Great fun. But the encore, Marcel Dupré's Prelude and Fugue in G minor, was more what I wanted.
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
