Organist Robert Huw Morgan

BACH AND BUXTEHUDE ORGAN MASTERY IN MORGAN'S SCHROEDER RECITAL

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!