Homage to Karg-Elert

After the many performances of Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s Homage to Handel in 2009 (continuing into 2010) there came, unexpectedly, an act of homage to the composer himself. Readers of the Organists’ Review will have found a pro­motional disc attached to the August issue provided by the Jan Van den Heuvel organ builders of Dordrecht in the Netherlands. They were the winners of an inter­national competition to design and build an organ in Copenhagen’s concert hall in the new media complex of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. The concert hall was designed by the famous French architect Jean Nouvel and, with the organ, was inaugurated on January 17th, 2009 in the presence of the Danish royal family. An instrument of 91 stops, it is the largest in Denmark, and has been defined as ‘symphonic in the true sense . . .  its tonal structure is unique’. Naji Hakim has described it as one of the best concert hall organs in the world, complementing and rivalling the forces and nuances of a symphony orchestra.

This disc comprises a wide variety of improvisations performed by the hugely talented Dutch organist Gerben Mourik, whose many prizes for this aspect of organ performance testify to the player’s technical skill and imaginative resource, which this disc so well illustrates. Three short tracks comprise ‘Three Impressions of Copenhagen’: Homage to Sigfrid Karg-Elert. They are entitled Night Song, Gentle Breezes Across the Water and Sunrise with Birdsong. Conceived as ‘a painting expressed with music’ they illustrate not only the player’s extraordinary insight into Karg-Elert’s harmonic and melodic idiom but also the wonderfully rich timbres of this unique instrument. It’s a remarkable achievement in every way, especially as the elusive character of Karg-Elert’s own writing makes any attempt at pastiche, even written down, (as, for instance, in Nicholas Choveaux’s work, Prelude-Improvisation, dedicated to Karg-Elert) extremely difficult to achieve successfully.

Gerben Mourik’s Homage reflects very much the spirit of Karg-Elert’s Seven Pastels from the Lake of Constance op 96; in fact the performer, in his liner notes, refers to the organ’s beautiful string choruses as its ‘pastels’. Their effectiveness is enhanced by the en­closure of three of the four manual divisions, which assists further in providing flexibility in the employment of the instrument’s many characterful solo voices. The entire programme which this disc provides illustrates the sheer virtuosity evident in the player’s achievement in the demanding art of improvisation – in this instance enhanced by a disciplined approach to a wide variety of musical forms. It’s a disc well worth studying as an example of what the younger generation of organists is achieving (Gerben Mourik is still in his 20s) in dedication to the ‘symphonic’ instrument, as well as a profound under­standing of the composer’s art.