Opening Concert for Forfar Gala Week

When two of Scotland's greatest virtuosi meet for a concert one is guaranteed that sparks will fly. Nor was one disappointed when Bill Stevenson and Ross Knight gave the opening concert in St John's Forfar for the Gala week.

Bill Stevenson is a fabulous organist and gave splendid accounts of works by Widor and others. Particularly welcome was a rare performance of Basil Harwood's Dithyramb. Harwood is best know for his choral settings in Ab and one anthem; his two best organ pieces, the Paean and the Dithyramb are very rarely heard and Bill played at his very best.

Bill is also a quite superb accompanist on the piano and fully met the demands made by Ross on the tuba.

You could not hope to meet a nicer young man than Ross Knight. He is warm, friendly open and utterly unspoiled. However, he is already, at 17, amongst the greatest tuba players in the world. The very church rocked on its foundations, whilst the listeners sat, in some cases literally, jaw-dropped as this apparently effortless display of wonder shelved decibels by the hundreds into the fine acoustic. Things were done on the tuba that one did not know could be done on any brass instrument. But amidst all the trickery there was a mature musician at work. Speeds were always correct and phrasing given every vital detail.

Bill and Ross gave the series of concerts such a whoosh at its opening.


Neil Smeaton, organist of St John's, will give a recital of music on trumpet and organ on Saturday 26 June at 12.30 p.m.

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There is many a "good" organist who tends, more than a little, to be snide about the Pavarotti of the organ, the American born Carlo Curley. The attitude has developed from the extreme showmanship, one has to only glance at his signature, an unusual sense of colour and a general feeling that he is not quite the gentleman as exhibited by ex-Oxbridge Scholars in the entire English speaking world. This would be very unfair. Carlo has the rock-sure sense of rhythm that most musicians would envy. It is combined with a virtuosity that is breathtaking and a remarkable sense of feel about the music and its interpretation.

The recital was a return visit, probably the third, this time organised by the Friends of the Caird Hall Organ. This remarkably successful group has done wonders for what is one of the finest concert organs in the world. The instrument is one of the few that was entirely built in Durham; most Harrisons are rebuilds. It is built on a scale that is breathtaking. Bad organists make a loud organ sound intolerable; good ones make it bounce! Carlo certainly did that. One forgets that Carlo uses the pungent Orchestral strings, even in a chorus with Great stops, much more often than the politely restrained strings on the Swell. There was little use of the huge Open Diapason I or the Hohl Flute on the same manual. These are two wonderful romantic stops, but we did hear almost every other stop on the organ. The organ is not big compared to many others, but has a wonderful array of soft stops, a palette that was used to its full.

It was interesting that in the Gordon Young Prelude in Classic Style Carlo played the last lines, not in octave scales as written, but in tenths, making it far more satisfying and is what many organists use. Wonderful new pieces were heard for the first time in Dundee, such as the Christos Patterakis by Roy Perry. Stefan Lindblad's Toccata on an American Theme was wonderful, a homage to Bernstein which shot syncopation and Jazz themes round the Thomsonry* with a virtuosic brilliance that was breathtaking. Manual changes were both ingenious and sure-footed, so to speak. The Mozart Fantasia K608 was rather less satisfying. This piece was written for a musical clock which had a modest rank of 8' stopped pipes. Wolfgang hated doing it and other pieces he wrote for the same instrument, but produced one of the greatest pieces in the repertoire, quite on a par with Bach. Carlo played rather too fast, and on occasions for the only time in the concert, possibly wrong pistons resulted in quite violent crescendos.

It was a learning curve to realise at the end of the concert what all of us thought about the music, a learning curve because there was quite a wide difference of opinion. Some people, knowing the original opera score looked down with scorn on Wagner's Liebestod. To many of us it was the crown of a wonderful concert. The organ was used in its entirety, but the playing had such depths of emotional passion that few of us were failed to be left breathless both during and at the end of a piece that was a cut to the quick of the soul.

We got not one, but two encores, Scott Joplin's The Entertainer, a fitting epigram for Carlo's performance, and the wonderfully restful To a Wild Rose by Edward McDowell, yet another American composer to add to the list.

*The Caird Hall, including the organ case, was designed by James Thomson, Dundee City Architect.
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