Organ Arrangments, Sometime They Work, And Sometimes They Don't.

Yesterday saw another organ concert at the Overture Center in Madison.  A little history behind these: At the turn of the 20th Century many cities were competing to build bigger auditoriums with bigger pipe organs.  Because people in smaller towns could not get access to big orchestra performances, many people started arranging various orchestral and operatic works for pipe organ.  These arrangements would be performed in the auditoriums for people in these small cities.  

At yesterday's concert the program was divided into two parts, one Oratorio section and one Opera section.  Sun Prairie's own resident opera singer Kyle Ketelsen and tenor Andrew Bidlack performed alongside Madison Symphony Orchestra Principal Organist Samuel Hutchinson.  I have no complaints about their performances at all, they were pure gold (although seriously, do you really expect me to have any criticism of Mr. Ketelsen at all?).  The program included works from Handel's famous oratorio The Messiah (known mostly by the "Hallelujah" chorus taken from The Book of Revelation) Mendelssohn's Elijah (which I've hardly heard in twenty years), and excerpts from Rossini's Stabat Mater.  These pieces fit perfectly with organ.  

       The opera section was more hit or miss.  Not that the men's performances were hit or miss—quite the contrary, they knocked it out of the park!—but unfortunately some of the tunes just didn't have the same oomph that the regular orchestral pieces did.  The excerpts featured in this section included the Intermezzo from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana (best known for being double-billed with Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci), themes and the Toreador song from Bizet's Carmen (one the Big Four), the Polonaise and Lensky's Lament from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (perhaps the most famous Russian opera in the world), and the Waltz and Act 1 duet from Gounod's Faust (one of only two of his works that's still regularly performed in our day).  

The trouble is that the organ seems to work better for sacred works and oratorio pieces than it does for opera.  Operas may have music for the organ, but transcriptions are another species entirely.  The Polonaise and Intermezzo worked well with the organ, but many of the themes from Carmen are just too jaunty and brassy to work well on the organ.  It was Mr. Ketelsen's talented singing and acting that made this arrangement of the Toreador Song enjoyable.  And the Waltz from Faust also came off as less of a dance piece and more like a carousel ride.  But there was no issue with the duet and the organ.  

This was a good concert, but I think that there are limits as to which pieces sound good when transcribed for organ and some that don't.