Organist Henry Fairs

FAIRS PLAYS EXTRAVAGANT REUBKE SONATA IN CREATIVE ARTS SERIES' ORGAN RECITAL

Henry Fairs, an organist at the University of Birmingham, launched the Creative Arts Series recital season Oct. 31 with an eclectic program spanning several centuries.

Mr. Fairs opened the program with a Buxtehude Toccata, the first part giving an opportunity for the organ and the performer to shine with brisk-fingered passages and sonorous pedal points. It has a fanfare-like quality, giving way to a fugue, which plays with the intimacy of a repeated-note subject. The third section combines the exuberance of the opening with the theme from the fugue before coming to rest over a tonic pedal tone. It filled Santa Rosa’s Resurrection Church while afternoon sunlight filtered through the stained glass windows.

Two chorales by Bach followed, and the artist primed the audience from the organ bench to listen for the melody of ”O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig” (Lamb of God, All Holy), heard in the long notes of the soprano and alto voices in the first two verses, as well as the word painting that occurs near the end of the second verse, “Sonst müssten wir verzagen” (We Would Be Miserable”). The latter is both chromatic and dramatic. The final verse is a serene depiction of the text, “Have Mercy on Us,” with the melody in the pedal part.

Next was the chorale, “Nun Danket Alle Gott” (“Now Thank We All Our God”), again the long notes of the melody appearing in the soprano, the accompanying lively interludes deftly played in the pedals.

Wesley’s “Choral Song” comprises two movements. The first is elegant and hymn-like, the second a more virtuosic fugue.

Mr. Fairs played an impressive sonata as his last work, based on the 94th Psalm, and written in 1857 by Reubke. The Sonata has the effect of a symphonic poem, opening with a somber Grave-Larghetto, followed by an intense Allegro con Fuoco, which then gives way to a soothing Adagio, and closes with a virtuosic Allegro that culminates in what Mr. Fairs describes as “one of the most angry and dramatic conclusions in the entire organ repertoire.” The piece was big, both in length and in substance.

The entire performance was flawless.