Post by KTJ on Jan 27, 2015 9:52:18 GMT 10
from The Dominion Post....
Michael Stewart and Richard Apperley: Bach to the Future
It's the biggest Bach bash Wellington has seen and heard in years. Tom Cardy talks
to the two ambitious organists who will play all 327 Bach organ works this year.
By TOM CARDY | 8:48AM - Tuesday, 27 January 2015
MUSICAL JOURNEY: Richard Apperley, left, and Michael Stewart at the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
organ where they will play Bach’s 327 organ works over the course of 2015.
— Photograph: MAARTEN HOLL/Fairfax NZ.
“WHEN people I suppose think of Bach's organ works they think ‘quite dour and heavy’. But people will be surprised. It's really fun music. There's a great range,” says organist Michael Stewart.
This is good to know because Stewart, organist and director of music at Wellington's St Paul's Cathedral, and fellow organist and assistant director of music Richard Apperley, will this week begin playing every single work for organ written by Bach. That's 327 works, which, if played in one go, would take about 21 hours and 30 minutes.
But Apperley and Stewart, who is also music director of specialist early music choir the Tudor Consort, are to spread the works over 28 recitals at the cathedral this year, beginning with a performance by Apperley this Friday.
The idea for The Bach Project was Apperley's. He says the trigger was hearing Stewart playing a Bach work and the enthusiasm of a choir man “who can't enough Bach”.
At the same time the organists realised 2015 marked the 330th anniversary of Bach's birth.
“Neither of us wanted to wait for 20 years for a big number like 350,” says Stewart.
He didn't, however, instantly think they could tackle all 327 works. “When Richard suggested it, I probably blanched a little bit because it is an awful lot of music. But then I thought, ‘Why not’?”
Stewart says it has been many years since all Bach's organ works have been performed in New Zealand. Nor, to the best of their knowledge, are they aware of all the works being played over one year.
In making their decisions on who would play each work and the programme for each recital, they individually listed the works on 327 strips of paper. Each strip also noted the work's duration and other details. They then spread out 28 sheets of paper to represent each recital, then placed the strips on the sheets.
Stewart and Apperley have divided the recitals between them, sometimes alternating, at other times each playing a few recitals in a row.
Some works for The Bach Project will be performed to coincide with a particular event in the calendar year, such as Easter. Stewart jokes that for his performance on Friday, March 13th the works will have a “death and dying theme”.
A special recital on June 26th at 6pm will include a midwinter feast of mulled wine and mince pies for the audience. It will be one of only two recitals to feature performances by both organists. Ahead of the midwinter recital, the public will be given the opportunity to vote for their favourite Bach organ works for the two to play that evening.
Otherwise, all the recitals will be from 12.45pm, with the majority on a Friday. For those who can't attend the lunchtime performances, each recitals will be streamed live on the cathedral's website, an option driven by Apperley, who is also a sound engineer.
One of the challenges of The Bach Project will be familiarity with the repertoire. While it's likely most of the audience will only heard a fraction of the 327 works played live before, Apperley and Stewart say that they each have only played about 10 percent of the works before. It will be as much new to them as it will be to listeners.
Stewart says this doesn't frighten him.
“Bach organ works, to organists, are the key repertoire and sometimes you need a bit of a challenge or an impetus to actually get in there and learn all sorts of music and this has proved to be it.”
Stewart's preparation has included listening to recordings of Bach's complete organ works. In particular were recordings by prolific French organist Marie-Claire Alain, who recorded Bach's complete organ works an impressive three times.
“It is so unbelievable and comparing them has been fascinating,” says Stewart. “Sometimes when I'm unsure about something and I hear how it works on someone else's recording I [think], ‘That's good I can complete it’. But I don't try to slavishly follow someone else's interpretation. Often it's what doesn't work in an interpretation that I hear that will inform how I want to do it.”
Apperley and Stewart also have different ideas in how to play Bach and that juxtaposition is likely to add variety to their project. Stewart's training and preference is to be historically accurate and to play the works as closely to how Bach would have played them. The cathedral's organ was built in 1877, but after several rebuilds, now has 3,531 pipes.
“I'm trying to make the organ sound like an organ that Bach might have used. Richard uses a broad canvas and the different colours that organ has.”
For Apperley, who trained under acclaimed organist Douglas Mews, it's the fact that the organ isn't the same as one Bach may have played. “To me, it's making the most of what we've got. I'm taking it up a step and applying it to this acoustic [space] and this instrument. If I'm playing Bach on piano it's totally different.”
And for all the lofty artistic goals of back-to-back Bach, there's also a prosaic one. Each concert is free, but the organists are encouraging audiences to make a $10 donation. All money raised from The Bach Project will go towards the cathedral's plans to rebuild its organ, which was last rebuilt in 1980.
Stewart says the organ is now showing its age and would benefit from a rebuild.
“If you think of it in terms of a motor vehicle because there are moving parts, you couldn't go 30 years without something major going wrong with it.”
• Wellington Cathedral of St Paul — “The Bach Project”
www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/65443760/Michael-Stewart-and-Richard-Apperley-Bach-to-the-future