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RECITAL REVIEW
September 18, 2005
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By Anna Carol Dudley
St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley presents an annual series of organ concerts, and Sunday's was played by Jonathan Dimmock and friends. The organ is a particularly attractive tracker by John Brombaugh, and the church has gone to some effort to create a good acoustic for it.
The two solo pieces Dimmock chose to play were by Bach and Hindemith. The Bach was a Prelude and Fugue in e minor (S.548). The two-manual organ is of modest size, but provides a considerable variety of colors. The fugue was on a complex, chromatic subject, and Dimmock's sure technique and choice of registration contributed greatly to its clarity. Hindemith's Sonata 1 from 1937 consisted of four movements. The first two, while appealing, tended to become repetitive rhythmically. The third, a fantasy, burst into a big cascade of sound, and the fourth was especially nicely constructed and inspired Dimmock to come up with imaginative, colorful combinations of stops. St. John's organist David Hunsberger fulfilled the role of page-turner and stop-puller.
Dimmock was ably joined in two Baroque trio sonatas by Carla Moore and Lisa Weiss on violin and Bill Skeen on cello. Skeen played not the usual continuo line but an obbligato gamba part (his gamba is tuned to low pitch for other performances, and it was easier to tune up to this organ's modern pitch with the cello). Johann Heinrich Schmeltzer's music is often capable of surprises, but this sonata was relatively conventional. It was made up of variations on a popular tune, one movement succeeding another with little differentiation of sound. A sonata by Buxtehude provided more variety of texture, beginning with a striking theme and giving extended solo sections to each violinist.
For some, the pièce de résistance which drew them to the concert was the appearance of Christine Brandes, singing the recently-discovered Gloria by Handel. Written in 1707 and then lost to the world for nearly three centuries, it resurfaced in 2001. It has been performed several times with orchestra, but the original scoring seems to have been for a chamber ensemble like this concert's. Brandes sang it with panache, revelling in the opening fireworks and expressively laying out the "Domine Deus," a solo with organ. The "Qui tollis" started with a brief introduction and featured some nice instrumental writing. Brandes occasionally was beating time with her voice in fast passages — unnecessary, since she has feeling and technique to burn. The piece ended with Handel and Brandes really hitting their stride — a long melismatic Amen which showcased her ample reserves of breath and brought the audience to its feet.
(Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculties of the
University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University lecturer emerita] and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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Christine Brandes
