Home  Reviews  Articles  Calendar  Presenters  Add Event     
Symphony
TWO OLD, TWO NEW AT THE SR SYMPHONY'S MARCH CONCERT IN WEILL
by Peter Lert
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Chamber
NOT A SEVENTH BUT A FIRST AT SPRING LAKE VILLAGE CONCERT
by Terry McNeill
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
THIRTY-THREE PLUS VARIATIONS AND AN OCEAN VIEW
by Terry McNeill
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Choral and Vocal
A ST. JOHN PASSION FOR THE AGES
by Abby Wasserman
Friday, March 8, 2024
Choral and Vocal
SPLENDID SCHUBERT SONGS IN SANET ALLEN RECITAL
by Terry McNeill
Saturday, March 2, 2024
Chamber
SHAW'S MICROFICTIONS HIGHLIGHTS MIRO QUARTET'S SEBASTOPOL CONCERT
by Peter Lert
Friday, March 1, 2024
Chamber
FRY ST. SQ PLAYS A DEMANDING 222 GALLERY CONCERT
by Terry McNeill
Friday, March 1, 2024
Symphony
YOUTH ORCHESTRA CHARMS BIG SPRING LAKE AUDIENCE
by Terry McNeill
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Chamber
SPIRITUAL CHAMBER MUSIC MARIN TRIO CONCERT
by Abby Wasserman
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Recital
ELEGANT VOCAL MASTERY AT ROSES SIGNATURE RECITAL
by Pamela Hicks Gailey
Sunday, February 25, 2024
RECITAL REVIEW
Green Music Center / Sunday, January 31, 2016
Robert Huw Morgan, organ

Organist Robert Huw Morgan

BACH AND BUXTEHUDE ORGAN MASTERY IN MORGAN'S SCHROEDER RECITAL

by James Harrod
Sunday, January 31, 2016

Stanford University organist Robert Huw Morgan played an exciting and interesting program of Baroque music in Schroeder Hall January 31, performing the entire concert with faultless virtuosity.

The recital’s program consisted of both familiar and unfamiliar selections, and his choices were familiar to the many organists in the audience: three each by Buxtehude and Bach.

Those of Buxtehude were two chorale preludes, BuxWV 214 and 215, based on the hymn tune “Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren” and the Praembulum in A Minor, BuxWV 15. The selections by Bach were the Pièce d’ Orgue, BWV 572, the “Fantasia super Komm, Heiliger Geist” (BWV 651) and the Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV 548. All of this music was played with total clarity, accuracy and loving familiarity.

The program selections unfamiliar to me were three short pieces for manuals only from Tudor England by Richard Wynslate (d. 1572), Thomas Preston (d. after 1559), Thomas Tomkins (1572 - 1656), and a set of excerpts from Lustiger Neuer Teutscher Gesäng by Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612).

Mr. Morgan demonstrated his gift for teaching by giving the audience an excellent discussion of the music, its time and place, and the instruments for which the music was composed. He is a skilled and lively pedagogue.

The final gift of heavenly pleasure to the large audience was Mr. Morgan’s glorious performance of Bach’s great Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV 548! Words cannot describe the thrill organists and students in the audience felt hearing this magnificent complex and very difficult piece of music played with rock steady tempo and sensitive articulation by a kindred soul of Bach.

This was a gift in recital!