All Episodes

He heralded the Common Man, and the uncommon organist, too. With a Fanfare, a Preamble, a Passacaglia and a symphony composed in Paris for his teacher’s debut in New York City, we explore some characteristic yet surprisingly little-known organ works by one of America’s most famous composers.

Grandeur and majesty. Passion and poetry. These are the elements of a new musical style that evolved in Paris in the latter 19th-century which revolutionized the art of the organ. On our next Pipedreams broadcast, we’ll hear two ‘firsts’ - two symphonic works for solo organ by Charles-Marie Widor and his pupil and, ultimately, competitor, Louis Vierne. Inspired by the sonorities of the lavish new instruments designed by master organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, both Widor, who was the first to call a composition an organ symphony, and Vierne created musical masterpieces that are both a challenge to play and a joy to hear.

The nine competitors have been thinned to three with the ultimate challenge just on the horizon. On our next Pipedreams broadcast, we take you to the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas where three young artists vie for the gold prizes on a Texas scale totaling over $50,000 in cash and awards! Bach prevails in the company of Brahms, Bill Bolcom and Max Reger, while Gunther Rost, Bradley Hunter Welch and James Diaz pull out all the stops in this most prestigious of American contests for young masters of the king of instruments. Tune in and hear the exciting conclusion of the finals of the Dallas International Organ Competition 2000, this week on Pipedreams.

To play the organ is a challenge under any circumstance. Manipulating all of those keyboards and pedals and buttons really keeps you on the edge. Can you imagine what must it be like to play the organ in competition? Well, that’s more pressure than I could tolerate, but on our next Pipedreams program you’ll hear nine young artists put it on the line, for prizes of up to $30,000, and hardly bat an eye. From the delicate tracery of a Bach Trio to the plangent passion of a contemporary toccata, young musicians go for the gold at the world’s most beneficent battle for organists. From the Caruth Auditorium and the Meyerson Symphony Center, it’s the Dallas International Organ Competition 2000, Part One, this week on Pipedreams.

If the organ is the king of instruments, then our next Pipedreams program is a showplace for the kings of kings. This week we will compare seven of the world’s largest pipe organs in all of their Olympian splendor. We’ll listen to Peter Baicchi as he plays at the Crystal Cathedral and Fred Swann as he shows off the latest additions to First Congregational Church, Los Angeles. We’ll also visit the Cadet Chapel at West Point, the Mother Church of Christian Science in Boston, and Passau Cathedral, the largest church organ in Europe. And we’ll hear the mightiest of all, the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia, and Senator Emerson Richards’ still-unrealized dream at Atlantic City’s Boarwalk Hall. It’s Big, Bigger, Biggest, the giants in their homes, this week on Pipedreams.

A celebration and remembrance of that most charismatic and controversial of 20th century American virtuosos, Virgil Fox [1912-1980] with comments from Fox and long-time friends and associates Ted Alan Worth and Lawrence Schreiber, plus recordings made by Fox at the Riverside Church, the Filmore East Auditorium in New York City, Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, and the Garden Grove Church in California. This program was produced in cooperation with Dan Cronenwett, Stephen Carlson, and public radio station KBYU-FM, Provo, Utah.

It’s about the adventure of discovery, the excitement of surprise. On the next Pipedreams program we explore recent works by mostly American composers, including a Concerto for Organ Solo, and a lyric Cantilena that sounds like a cool, slow jazz solo brought to church. For the kids, a funny, quasi-rap piece about Rex, the King of Instruments. Some people will do anything to get your attention, and our highlight is a stunning item for organ, strings and percussion which will knock your socks off. Don’t miss the great sounds, American Premieres, this week on Pipedreams. To learn more about Stephen Paulus and Norman Mackenzie, read Family Secret by Michael Barone.

Ingenuity, subtlety, virtuosity, even heroism are traits necessary in becoming a world-class musician. Hear them applied by Heather Hinton, Peter Krasinski, John Schwandt, Justin Bischof, and Ann Elise Smoot, all winners of American Guild of Organists national competitions. I captured them ‘on the spot’ in Denver, showing us the way through music of many moods: fast and sinister, prayerful, and heroic. It’s amazing what the youngsters are up to these days and there’s no stopping them. Tune in and hear them Playing for the Prize, this week on Pipedreams.

A return to Georgia on this week’s Pipedreams program recorded during an American Guild of Organists convention in Atlanta. We’ll visit the Cathedral of Saint Philip to sample this moody meditation by Walter Hilse, hear a sacred song-setting by Rachel Laurin of Montréal, journey to Peachtree Road United Methodist Church for Karel Paukert’s scintillating representation of Czech and American works, and to Trinity Presbyterian Church where Todd Wilson, George Hanson and Atlanta Symphony members explore music for organ and strings. History revisited.

To know this instrument is to celebrate the totality of its wide-ranging repertoire, and one of today’s most broad-minded organists is Professor Craig Cramer from Notre Dame University in Indiana. He takes equal pleasure in contemporary compositions and historic music played on period instruments. We’ll hear him perform Bach in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Steinfeld, Germany. We also hear him in recital on the 19th-century Johnson organ at a convent in Mankato, Minnesota and on the new installation at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma. Craig shares his insights and experiences gained during his international recital tours.

This week’s Pipedreams program takes on the challenge of evoking vivid visual images - and with our ears we’ll view a procession in an ancient cathedral, a thunderstorm in the countryside, colorful landscapes in southern France, and an art show at a gallery. Along with works by Mulet, Ermand Bonnal, Eugene Reuchsel, and Lefebure-Wely, we’ll enjoy a complete performance of Mussorgsky’s famous keyboard impressions of paintings by his friend Victor Hartmann - visions of children playing near the Tuileries, the Market at Limoges, the Catacombs, the Ballet of the chicks in their shells and the Great Gate of Kiev. Nine soloists paint the town with organic colors. For more on Pictures at an Exhibition, read Paintings in Sound, by Michael Barone.

There’s no doubt that he’s fleet of foot and finger, but on this week’s Pipedreams broadcast Anthony Newman shows that his imagination is every bit as quick. We’ll hear him in works by Bach recorded in New York and Poland; in two concertos by Handel played with extravagant embellishments in concert with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; in some French miniatures presented at the Performing Arts Center in Naples, Florida; and in several of his own compositions and in duet performances with his wife Mary Jane. Don’t miss these imaginative insights and intrepid interpretations from one of America’s foremost virtuoso talents and thinkers.

This week’s Pipedreams broadcast takes you to the Bay Cities in California for a program of organ music on the lighter side. At the Oakland Paramount, Lew Williams and Jim Riggs pour on the charm, Kevin King tightens the ranks at the Berkeley Community Theatre, while across the water Simon Gledhill and Clark Wilson open doors at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, still one of the country’s best settings for Wurlitzer wonders. With a Mississippi Suite, a Stephen Foster Fantasy, a musical String of Pearls, plus some odes to the delights of local life, it’s a package frothy and delightful.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear On this week’s Pipedreams program, soloists Leo Abbott, Tom Murray, Fred MacArthur, Catharine Crozier, and Brian Jones will take you on a tour of historic instruments in Beantown - from the immense Aeolian-Skinner organ at the Christian Science Mother Church, the E.M. Skinner instrument at Old South Church moved from Saint Paul, MN, and the historic Hooks in Jamaica Plain and the Immaculate Conception Church.

Beyond the familiar Trumpet Tune, this week’s broadcast features many pieces by one of England’s foremost masters, one of his contemporaries and some later imitators. He’s justly celebrated, but sometimes for not quite the right reasons. Henry Purcell, the foremost English composer of the late seventeenth century, is our particular fascination on the next Pipedreams broadcast, when we’ll listen to everything he wrote for organ, plus some pieces that he DIDN’T, but to which his name is traditionally and tenaciously attached nonetheless. With period instruments and grand cathedral organs played by Robert Woolley, John Butt, John Scott, Davitt Moroney, and even Virgil Fox, we go on beyond the familiar Trumpet Tunes to hear Voluntaries and Marches, Anthems, Songs, and Dances, looking back through 3 centuries in tribute to the memory of one of Britain’s famous past masters.

We pick up the contrapuntal thread from last week and continue with some additional adventures. Bach left Die Kunst der Fuge incomplete, perhaps by design, perhaps by oversight, perhaps due to ill health. Should one resist the temptation to imagine a conclusion? We don’t.

Bach may have considered this piece a theoretical study and not have intended The Art of Fugue to be performed at all, since he prepared it in open score and left the climax incomplete. On our next Pipedreams program, we give life to theory, as an international array of soloists leads us through Bach’s contrapuntal maze, this music which astounds the mind and delights the ear simultaneously. A fugue too many? Not to worry, we’ll provide a map to help you listen, and hand you all the keys necessary to open the doors of mystery. How does it end?

Everything has to start somewhere, and on this week’s Pipedreams broadcast it begins with some alpha wavesmusic in the key of A, beginning a scalar ascent through some of Johann Sebastian Bach’s best and best-loved works. Wolfgang Rübsam performs at the Martini Church in Groningen, the Netherlands; Kevin Bowyer solos in Odense, Denmark; and Daniel Chorzempa, David Roght, Hans Fagius, Noel Rawsthorne, Jean-Patrice Brosse, Thierry Mechler and E. Power Biggs all reveal the genius of Bach in preludes and fugues, fantasies and chorale settings.