REVIEW
Bálint Karosi – Organ recital – November 5, 2007
First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee
When I took my seat and began looking over the program it was at first disappointing to see that every selection except for the improvisation was from the Baroque period. After a few moments reading the notes, however, it was clear why the selections were chosen for a single program. It is the 300th death anniversary of Dietrich Buxtehude. The influence of the composer’s music on J. S. Bach was great.
Bach also studied the works of Georg Böhm, according to C. P. E. Bach, writing that “My father loved and studied the works of the Lüneberg organist...,” and one of Böhm’s minuets appears in the Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook. Böhm invented the chorale partita.
Bálint programmed three chorale preludes from Bach’s Clavierubung, Part III. “Vater unser im Himmelreich,” (BWV 682) a 2 Clav. Et Pedal e Canto fermo in Canone, is Luther’s hymn-verse setting of the Lord’s Prayer. “Wir glauben alle an einen Gott,” (BWV 680) in Organo pleano con pedale, “We All Believe In One God” is the most often performed of the three, with its memorable pedal theme. “Dies sind die heiligen zehen Gebot,” (BWV 678) a 2 clav. Et Ped. Canto fermo in Canone, set the Ten Commandments to music, and the piece is above all a most definite statement.
The program began with the Preludium in C Major (BuxWV 138) by Buxtehude, followed by the Partita on the Aria, “Jesu du bist allzu schöne,” by Böhm, the suite of thirteen variations, based on the tune “Jesus, Thou Art Wholly Beautiful.” The third place on the program was Mr. Karosi’s turn to show his skills at improvisation, an art that nearly died until fairly recently, but which now is in process of rebirth – with a vengeance.
The great Toccata in F Major (BWV 540a), by J. S. Bach, followed. After the three chorale preludes, the program ended, fittingly, with the towering masterpiece, the Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor (BWV 582).
To share with everyone this experience of Bálint Karosi’s masterful playing, I must first state that having heard over decades many instrumental performers play unevenly, numerous singers who knew more about tone production than about shaping a phrase, and a world of orchestral performances with mixed expertise of some personnel, I am not quick to use encomiums. Some recitals have featured a soloist who plays a work very well in every way, but then comes a piece that had much better been omitted from the program, for want of adequate preparation or performance skill.
After the Buxtehude and Böhm compositions were played as well as they can be played, I was reminded why Bach found them greatly absorbing. The next selection was the improvisation. In all candor, hearing an improvisation attempt is very rare for me, because most performers cannot improvise well. I wondered if this was going to be a strange experience, one of a little something good here, much filler there, and quickly done with. Improvisation requires imagination and experience, much facility in modulation and rhythmic changes, plus every other theoretical device, obviously – and guts. One must love to improvise, also, getting lost in the pursuit of making good sense and arresting musical expression of a theme.
Bálint was offered two subjects, he looked at them very briefly, no more than fifteen seconds together, decided on the theme he would use, then seated himself at the console. After quickly setting some registrations, he began to play the subject, followed by the first variation. I tried to count them, but the performer began to play with such intriguing invention that the number of variations became unimportant. Twice, I wondered what Mr. Karosi was doing, because at one point he began to explore the organ’s lower and lowest sounds, and I thought he may be lost in a rumble, then a soft, low mumble, because I could hear no hint of the theme.
The problem was mine, however, because suddenly the performer began to work through the register with an accompaniment of dream-like originality way down there, to an expanded statement of the theme, an unexpected device. This was playing in very contemporary style. I looked across the aisle at a professional organist, to see him with lowered head and an expression of unmistakable fascination. When the variations rose from the lower register, there were some wonderful treatments of the theme in the thoroughly French style of Langlaise, Messaien, Dupre, and other French organ composers and performers, whose music I had discovered at Oberlin.
I needed my “French fix,” because I truly enjoy the innovative French organ repertoire of the last half of the 19th Century, and into the 20th Century. Obviously, Mr. Karosi is very much at home in the style of cerebral harmonies and long suspensions attempting to express the self very much from the deepest part of the spirit, and his exploration of its often mystical sonorities in improvisation – no easy accomplishment – was at times breathtaking.
Certainly, I did not expect to hear what Bálint gave to us: an improvisation which had a ready-to-publish sound to it. When he brought the improvisations to a close, I realized he had begun about twenty minutes earlier. The man was having fun – the kind of fun you witness when great talent begins to roam inventively through the mind’s storehouse of the musical art. Bálint possesses the technical expertise to perform any work he determines to play, and he also possesses the musical talent to play with great artistry.
On the rarest of occasions (I can think of only three in a lot of years) I have witnessed artistic maturity in performers only in their twenties. In a way, it is not easy to take, but there is always the hope that the performer has a heart of humility, to know that there is always much more to learn, other performers to carefully hear, and to never take a performance for granted, like one pianist who said that sometimes he thought about finding a good restaurant after the performance – while in the middle of a Beethoven slow movement. It is not so simple for the two great qualities of a wonderfully talented performer to coexist within: driving energy and determination to accomplish (or fire in the belly), and humility.
When I was an underclassman at Oberlin, I confess that Bach’s F Major Toccata bored me. What a dreadful confession, but I was learning to “hear.” For a very long time, however, the work has been a tremendous listening experience for me, probably having heard it close to a hundred times. It is not too uncommon to hear a performer, old enough to know better, start the work too fast, and then forced to slow down. Much better that than the alternative! On two occasions, I have heard performers gradually increase the tempo to the point of panic, with nervous doubt among the audience that the soloist would make it to the end. The work’s powerful drive and canonical interplay is a shining example of the composer’s incomparable genius. It is also a daunting example of blazing technique, especially in the pedals.
Bálint began the piece at the perfect lively tempo for a piece of such brilliance, and played the masterwork in rock-solid adherence to that tempo, to completion in a cadence that appropriately beveled the last phrase to finality. In a large church, with a very knowledgeable audience (the recital was co-sponsored by the Nashville Chapter of the American Guild of Organists), and with an impressive group of organists and choir directors of my decades-long acquaintance in attendance, there was a very brief moment of silence after the last chord, before many in the audience loudly expressed their hearty enjoyment of the performance. Such audiences tend to be sedate and applaud politely. Not so that evening.
In a performing sense, the “huge” Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor demand a big grasp of that unusual set of variations, and exquisite handling of what is perhaps one of the most tuneful, straightforward fugue subjects and the uses of its very workable contrapuntal potential in the literature. The performer envisioned a mature concept of the Passacaglia, using imaginatively varying dynamics significantly different from those on my recordings. Those differences were not because of the uniqueness of each organ. Mr. Karosi simply uses his ear to employ imaginative registrations, always very appropriate. The performance exhibited that wonderful clarity expected when hearing Bach, and the playing was never in any section less than expertly done. Delineation of each voice was thorough and artistic. (I still did not know I was listening to an Oberlin graduate of this year!)
I was grateful for the screen in front of the sanctuary, for projecting Bálint’s playing the excellent von Beckerath instrument, installed about twenty-five years ago, and since enhanced. When an audience stands, turns around to applaud the performer in the back balcony, with quite a few of us yelling bravos, the performance had to be exciting. Because I had raced through the notes about him, I kept wondering how old this fellow was, seeing the many mentions of all the competitions he had won, including those playing the clarinet, composition awards, and his having fulfilled a number of commissions for new works.
I remember some thoughts that might smack of a modicum of envy. “So, he can orchestrate. Yes, he can lecture about the eight madrigal books, the motets, and operas by Monteverdi, and conduct a motet by de Lassus. Sure, he can sight read the Scarlatti sonatas at the harpsichord, all of them. He probably has both books of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier memorized, and it’s said the man speaks several languages. But, can he make a really great gruyere soufflé!” I was glad to be a pianist, that evening, but I enjoyed the performance as much as any organist, having heard those works many times at Oberlin and since, except for the Böhm.
Among Bálint’s commissions is the “Consonances” Concerto for Organ and Symphony Orchestra, to inaugurate in June of this year the new organ at the National Concert Hall in Budapest, which is Bálint’s home. The composer was the featured soloist. Somehow, I had skipped over the part about his being a 2007 Oberlin graduate, a student of James David Christie, earning both the Master of Music in Historical Performance and the Artist Diploma. It had actually occurred to me that this young man would really have loved the tremendous organ environment at Oberlin, and all the other impressive musical studies he would find greatly interesting. Later, of course, I had to laugh at the coincidence, especially when I asked the performer where he received his training, and to hear him say it was Oberlin.
Bálint has won second and first prizes in competitions from Prague (2nd prize in the Spring International Clarinet Competition), to Syracuse (1st prize in the Arthur Poister Organ Competition), to Miami (1st prize and the audience prize, plus the Matz Scholarship, of the Miami International Organ Competition), to Saint-Maurice (2nd prize, Saint-Maurice International Organ Competition), to Dublin (1st prize and the audience prize at the Dublin International Organ Competition). The listing is partial.
Those who have heard Bálint’s playing and who have talked with him have already thought it, so I will state it here and now. Like most superlative words we all hear incessantly, instead of with the rarity for which they should be reserved, this word is to be used very, very seldom, especially by professionals who understand the realities of their field. Though no one will ever definitively understand the creative processes, the coming together of many elements within, to write, paint, sculpt, compose, perform, to design, we can understand much of the chemistry of genius, of its early development within a nurturing, reasonably stable atmosphere of good teaching, and wise personal guidance.
After the recital, I spoke with Bálint. His reticent, quiet personality surprised me. The attendees lined up to meet the performer, and their comments were very enthusiastic. It was intriguing when Bálint replied to their most effusive remarks with a very soft response, “No, no.” It was truly pleasing to me that he was not at all prepared to own up to greatness at his young age.
The man has not wasted any time, and he has his hands full as the director of music at First Lutheran Church in Boston, where there are many musical events. He can be seen in a short video on the church’s website, conducting one of their choirs. If he has a free hand for a moment, Bálint conducts himself at the organ. One becomes suspicious that he is oblivious to the audience, and that he is completely absorbed in the musical matters at hand.
Rolland Puckett, ’61
