Renée Anne Louprette at Disney Hall

Sunday, October 7, 2018

The 2018-2019 Organ Recital series opened last night with a truly magnificent performance.

Renée Anne Louprette was the featured artist, joined by Irish-American multi-instrumentalist Ivan Goff on uilleann pipes and (for part of one piece) Irish flute.

I'm always delighted when I walk into Disney Hall for an organ recital, and see a score on the music desk of the attached console: that usually indicates that at least part of the program will be played from there, with approximately half the pipework under tracker key action, i.e., under the artist's direct mechanical control, with all the potential for subtle nuances of articulation that entails. Ms. Louprette began the program from the attached console, with the Bach Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 541. She then moved down to the stage console for the remainder of the program, continuing with her own arrangement of music from the opera Alcyone, an opera by French Baroque composer Marin Marais (an "averted tragedy," in which Neptune restores the doomed lovers to life at the end). Personally, I see the move down to the stage console at this point in the program as the only real misstep: it seems to me that this could have benefitted even more from the subtlety of tracker action than the Bach.

After the Marais, Ms. Louprette was joined by Mr. Goff, for their own arrangement of Lament for Limerick - The Rolling Wave, a traditional Irish air, and then the world premiere of contemporary American composer Eve Beglarian's Were You at the Rock?, a piece that was unlike anything I'd heard before, yet not at all unpleasant. It exploited a number of effects specific to the uilleann pipes (and found in a great deal of Irish folk music).

After the intermission, Ms. Louprette continued with the Alain Litanies. This was not the relentless, take-no-prisoners performance I'd come to expect from, say, Diane Belcher; rather, this one took an occasional moment to breathe. And yet, in so doing, it shed new light upon the piece.

Then Mr. Goff returned to the stage for a second traditional Irish air, The Angel's Share - An Buachaill Caol Dubh. This began as a flute-and-organ duet, with a fairly long organ solo in the middle, to allow Mr. Goff time to switch to the pipes.

The program concluded with the Duruflé Suite for Organ, Opus 5. After a standing ovation, Ms. Louprette and Mr. Goff performed their arrangement of yet another traditional Irish air (their second arrangement of that particular tune, somewhat in the style of Olivier Messiaen.)

This was one of the strongest season-openers I've heard (and it is a shame that it was not better-attended). It would also be a shame if Ms. Louprette weren't invited back: I've heard rumors of bias against organ recitalists who use the attached console, and out of those who have used it (and used it to great advantage) in recitals, I can't recall any of them being invited back. There may be nothing at all in the rumors, but I admire her guts in using the attached console.