Carpenter's brings cutting-edge organ playing to First Plymouth

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BY JOHN CUTLER / For the Lincoln Journal Star

There’s a new world of serious organ music out there, and Cameron Carpenter brought its cutting edge using the large Lied Organ at First Plymouth Church on Friday night.

Carpenter’s concert opened this year’s Abendmusik series, in collaboration with the Lincoln Organ Showcase.

His unlikely transcription of the Chopin Op. 10 “revolutionary” etude No. 12 came first. It is full of heavy black notes for piano, which Carpenter executed on the organ pedals. Feet have never flown so fast before.

The audience could recognize what Carpenter was doing with the well-known Bach Chorale Prelude “Nun Komm, Der Heiden Heiland.” While maintaining loyalty to the score, Carpenter persisted in re-casting melodies to bring a new sound to the old work.

“That’s my vision,” Carpenter said after the performance. “I break a lot of the rules. I don’t play it as it is written, I can’t do that anymore.”

The Marcel Dupre “Prelude and Fugue in B major” is often chosen by advanced organ students as a recital or semester test piece.

Extremely demanding in its concept and articulation, the Dupre work requires a lot of concentration on separation of phrases and inner short melodies.

Carpenter accomplished this in a different way. The phrases were often assigned to alternate keyboards, even pedal, with stop changes during any given phrase. Different sonorities flew around the hall but the organist’s primary goal of transparency was job one.

Carpenter chose to improvise his final program offering. It’s a technique used frequently in organ literature to take a melody and build a full movement around it as the work evolves. No manuscript, just notes.

Carpenter warned the audience, “You may hear a tune in here you recognize, but don’t let on that you know it.” The crowd was puzzled.

Some familiar sacred and secular melodies appeared through the traditional improv pattern. New to the mix were the use of a different variety of organ stops and quick changes of the melody line among manuals and pedal.

The crowd reacted when they heard a familiar one in movement three. It was a Nebraska fight song. Big applause and a standing ovation followed.

An encore? Sure. Something expected? No. Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the organ again used the huge arsenal of the Lied Organ’s stop list to make it sound like a large symphony orchestra was at work.

If this is the harbinger of organ performance to come, then the 450 patrons at First-Plymouth approved. Heavy applause for almost every selection and a standing ovation at concert’s end brought a look of satisfaction to Carpenter’s face.

Continuation of the treat comes with the debut of Carpenter’s CD/DVD titled “Revolutionary” for Telarc, out Sept. 23. It includes several pieces performed Friday.