‘OrganFest’ showcases soloists, renovated Graham Chapel organ

The Washington University Symphony Orchestra will present “OrganFest,” a concert showcasing the recently refurbished Graham Chapel organ, at 3 p.m. Nov. 19.

Dan Presgrave, instrumental music coordinator in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, conducts the 70-plus-member orchestra. Featured soloists are William Partridge Jr., University organist, and Barbara Raedeke, instructor in organ in the music department.

Renovations to the organ were completed last year. Work involved considerable internal and exterior repairs as well as replacing ten ranks of reeds and equipping the instrument with a new four-manual console and a new pedalboard. Built by the M.P. Moller Pipe Organ Co. in 1948, the organ previously was renovated in 1980. The latest restoration was made possible by funds provided by the Roland Quest Memorial Trust and matching sources.

For centuries, the popularity of organ music rested mainly on its solo repertoire, especially the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Yet as concert halls were increasingly built with pipe organs on their stages, subsequent composers wrote works for organ with orchestra accompaniment, and the organ concerto became a part of the orchestral repertoire.

“OrganFest” will open with Crown Imperial — in which the organ is treated as a regular member of the orchestra — by British composer William Walton (1902-1983). A march of ceremonial pomp, the piece originally was written for the coronation of King George VI in 1937.

The program continues with a pair of contrasting organ concertos: Concerto in B-flat Major, op. 4, no. 2 (c. 1735) by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), and Concerto for Organ in G Major (1936) by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963).

Raedeke, who serves as organist and choir director at Parkway United Church of Christ, will perform the Handel concerto, one of six composed for his Opus 4 set, a hallmark of the genre. Handel — like his contemporary Bach — was inclined to demonstrate his prowess as a performer by composing virtuosic works for keyboard instruments and continued to appear as a soloist well into old age. Prior to Opus 4, Handel had written the earliest known orchestral music with a featured solo part for organ; it appears in an instrumental section of his oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo.

Partridge, organist-choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral, will perform the Poulenc concerto, the composer’s only work for organ. Commissioned by Princesse Edmond de Polignac, a patron of the arts in 1930s Paris, the piece opens with references to Bach’s Fantasia in G minor, though it mainly reflects a style of writing — sometimes introspective, sometimes grand and flashy — that dominated French organ music during Poulenc’s time. Unlike the typical concerto, which consists of three movements, this concerto consists of multiple contrasting sections — including powerful dissonances and playful, jazzy rhythms — that elide into one large movement.

The program concludes with Symphony No. 1 in F minor by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), performed in honor of the centennial of his birth. Written when Shostakovich was only 19, the work displays a youthful enthusiasm as well as an affinity for both the grand symphonies of 19th-century Russia and the satiric, acerbic music of his older contemporaries Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. The piece also contrasts with the darker mood of Shostakovich’s subsequent works — such as the Seventh Symphony (Leningrad) and the Eleventh Symphony (The Year 1905) — which today serve as a musical monument to Russia’s tragic history.

The performance is free and open to the public. For more information, call 935-4841 or e-mail staylor@wustl.edu.