Reviews

The cathedral’s recital series featuring advanced students from the Royal College of Music continues to delight and astonish its audiences, though attendance at the most recent one, on June 19th, was smaller than usual. Those who were not there missed an outstanding recital by Toril Briese - a versatile and mature young Swedish player - in a varied programme which demanded sympathy with several diverse styles. It is always a particular delight when an organist from overseas presents an unfamiliar work by a compatriot. The music of Erland von Koch, who died in 2009 a few months short of his 99th birthday, is almost unknown in Britain, but his Kontraster for organ, written in 1971, clearly deserves to be widely recognised; its three movements have well contrasted characters with lively rhythmic and melodic invention and are effectively written for the organ. Toril clearly enjoys this music and was a most persuasive advocate; she crisply articulated the rhythmic fanfares of the final movement and shaped the grotesque melodic lines of the central Misterioso with piquant registration and sensitivity to its atmosphere. Although Mendelssohn’s Six Sonatas, Op 36 are central to the organ repertoire, they are not straightforward for the interpreter, for they occupy an ambiguous position between the residual baroque performance traditions within which Mendelssohn grew up and the very different romantic ideals which were becoming pervasive towards the middle of the 19th century. Toril’s approach in two movements from the F minor Sonata was exemplary: adopting simple registration schemes, articulating motives rather than long phrases and with an underlying strict pulse, she nevertheless made room for highlighting expressively significant moments with subtle agogic accents and tempo rubato, and a lively sense of the music’s rhetoric. In other words, she allowed the music to speak.  Her musical communication skills were perhaps most in evidence in two movements from Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur . After a registration accident at the very beginning – not her fault; it was the result of a persistent inadequacy in the wiring of the electric stop-action – she quickly regained her composure and was totally in command of the tricky middle section of La Vierge et l’Enfant with its three independent lines, and in the serenely spacious ending the final modèrè arabesque was played unusually thoughtfully and gently, as no doubt it should be, but rarely is. The second piece was Le Verbe, in which the Word of God speaks powerfully and eloquently. Here again, Toril went straight to the heart of the music, scrupulously reproducing the composer’s registration requirements, allowing the forceful opening section to overwhelm us and the long-breathed solo which follows to induce a sense of timeless meditation – the composer described it as a fusion of the styles of plainsong, Indian ragas and some of Bach’s Chorale Preludes. Such sustained slow playing is a test of the player’s insight and concentration; she passed that test with flying colours, as she did every challenge of the whole programme. Not only is Toril Briese an organist with a formidable technique and mature musicianship; she is developing the insight necessary for the interpretation of the profoundest music written for the instrument.

 

-by Michael Frith

 

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