Wayne Oquin; Horatio Parker; Christopher Rouse - Organ Concertos (Paul Jacobs)

Information

Composer: Wayne Oquin; Horatio Parker; Christopher Rouse

• Parker - Organ Concerto in E-Flat Minor, Op. 55
• Oquin - Resilience
• Rouse - Organ Concerto
• Ives - Variations on "America"

Paul Jacobs, organ

Nashville Symphony Orchestra

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor

Date: 2024

Label: Naxos

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Review

Set down piecemeal over four and a half years, this collection straddles boundaries but certainly merits a hearing. Its common thread is the participation of the stellar American organist Paul Jacobs, here framing recent material composed expressly for him with hoarier classics.

To be fair, Horatio Parker’s Organ Concerto (1902) is characterised by nobility as well as a certain stodginess, its main stylistic precursor being Joseph Rheinberger, with whom Massachusetts-born Parker studied in Munich. The second part of the opening movement is a surprise: an intimate Andante in which the soloist converses with solo violin, horn and harp. The scherzo-ish Allegretto also proves unexpectedly deft, timpani used at once extensively and with restraint. The score has been recorded before, though not with comparable finesse. At the other end of the programme we have the Variations on ‘America’ concocted by Parker’s most individualistic pupil, Charles Ives, while still in his teens. Non-organists may be more familiar with William Schuman’s orchestral transmogrification. As given in the edition by E Power Biggs, the eight-minute original becomes a kind of extended encore for the soloist alone. Brits cannot but hear the tune as that of our own national anthem.

Of the two newer works for organ and orchestra, Wayne Oquin’s Resilience (2015) has been something of a calling card for Jacobs and a breakthrough for the composer, a fellow faculty member at the Juilliard School. His first orchestral utterance to achieve a commercial recording, its calls and responses entertain over a vaguely cinematic 12 minutes.

Next, a weightier 20-minute concerto typical of a creative voice lost too soon. The late Christopher Rouse’s Organ Concerto (2014) is traditional in form, pugnacious in content. Of the usual woodwind complement only bass clarinet and contrabassoon are retained. A central Lento, which I have seen traduced as ‘sentimental’, is another of the composer’s heartfelt meditations on the nature and acceptance of grief. The outer movements have a hustle and bustle redolent of Hindemith or Carl Nielsen. For me at least, the finale’s return to consonance and affirmation amid a welter of competing cacophonies is not just showy but uplifting. Along the way you’ll find quotations from (or allusions to) Poulenc, Stravinsky, what sounds like Holst (or Holst via Bernard Herrmann), Messiaen, 1970s rock, 1880s Saint-Saëns and more. Rouse wrote the piece ‘the old-fashioned way’ with pencil and paper, on a card table in his living room. That said, its vigorous postmodernism is perhaps unlikely to appeal to devotees of Victorian rectitude.

Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony acquit themselves with distinction throughout and careful miking of the custom-built, 3568-pipe instrument at Nashville’s Laura Turner Concert Hall allows harmonies to register nicely however dense the textures. All these recordings are ostensibly live. As someone once said, play loud or not at all.

— David Gutman

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Wayne Oquin (born 9 December 1977 in Houston, Texas) is an American composer. A Distinguished Alum of Texas State University, he holds MM and DMA degrees from Juilliard, where he studied with Milton Babbitt and Samuel Adler. A college faculty member since 2008, he has served as Chair of the Ear Training Department since 2013. Oquin's works have been performed and recorded by leading ensembles, including major U.S. military bands and international orchestras. He has received numerous honors, including the National Band Association's William D. Revelli Award and the U.S. Air Force Commander's Medal of Excellence.

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Horatio Parker (15 September 1863 – 18 December 1919) was an American composer. Educated in Boston and Munich under Joseph Rheinberger, Parker absorbed German Romantic influences. He worked as an organist, choirmaster and educator, including a post at the National Conservatory of Music in New York during Dvořák's directorship. Parker achieved recognition with his oratorio Hora Novissima (1893), which established his reputation as a leading choral composer. His output also included orchestral, church and theatrical works, notably Mona (1912), the first full-length American opera produced at the Metropolitan.

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Christopher Rouse (15 February 1949 – 21 September 2019) was an American composer. Educated at Oberlin Conservatory and Cornell University, he studied with George Crumb and Karel Husa and later taught at the Eastman School of Music and The Juilliard School. His works were performed by major orchestras worldwide, and he gained particular acclaim for his concertos written for leading soloists. Rouse received numerous honors, including a Grammy Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His final composition, Symphony No. 6, premiered posthumously in 2019, marking the culmination of an influential career.

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Paul Jacobs (born 1977) is an American organist. A prodigy from Washington, Pennsylvania, he studied at the Curtis Institute and Yale University, and joined the Juilliard School faculty in 2003, becoming chair of the organ department the following year. Renowned for performing vast repertoires from memory, Jacobs has presented the complete organ works of Bach and Messiaen in marathon concerts. He has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras worldwide, premiered numerous works, and received major honors, including a GRAMMY Award and the American Guild of Organists' International Performer of the Year Award.

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