LINCOLN CENTER

Juilliard
Paul Recital Hall

Paul Jacobs - Organ

Max REGER Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H, Op. 46

J.S. BACH Chorale-Prelude: Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, BWV 658

J.S. BACH Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 539 (The “Fiddle”)

REGER Intermezzo, Op. 80, No. 10

REGER Introduction, Variations, and Fugue on an Original Theme, Op. 73

We are finally getting back to "The Season."  Our performance subscriptions begin to ramp up this month for the 14-15 Arts Season in New York City.  It's been a great summer but we're ready for some music!

Paul Jacobs is considered by many as the finest organist living today.  We are seeing him by buying two $30.00 tickets for a Faculty Recital at Juilliard!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Jacobs_(organist)

http://www.juilliard.edu/about/newsroom/2014-15/grammyr-award-winning-organist-paul-jacobs-performs-works-bach-and-reger

http://www.pauljacobsorgan.com

"In 2003 Jacobs was invited to join the faculty of the Juilliard School and the following year, was named chairman of its organ department, making him one of the youngest faculty appointments in the school's history.^[1] Winning accolades and awareness for the pipe organ from both critics and audiences alike, Jacobs has performed on five continents, and by the age of 32 performed in each of the 50 United States. His repertoire includes music from the 16th century through contemporary times, including new works written for him. He has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Pacific Symphony.

Jacobs is known for playing demanding programs exclusively from memory. He has memorized the complete works of Olivier Messiaen, as well as the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, and Cesar Franck.

In addition to numerous awards and honors, Jacobs was the first organist to be given the Harvard Musical Association's Arthur W. Foote Award in 2004. He received the Yale School of Music's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2005, and in 2007 he was awarded the William Schuman Scholars Chair at the Juilliard School."

The New York Times' review:

MUSIC | MUSIC REVIEW

Who Said ‘Massive’ and ‘Foreboding’ Can’t Be Enjoyable?

Paul Jacobs, Organist, Plays Max Reger’s Works at Juilliard

By JAMES R. OESTREICH

SEPT. 11, 2014

Paul Jacobs playing the Holtkamp pipe organ in a concert of Bach and Max Reger at the Juilliard School.

The program notes might have scared anyone away. Max Reger is “frequently described as one of the most ‘difficult’ composers in the whole classical canon,” they began, going on to call Reger’s musical language disorienting and complex, his harmonic and textural juxtapositions jarring and his music in general “something at once massive and foreboding,” all in the first paragraph.

This for a most appealing evening of works by Reger and Bach, performed by Paul Jacobs on the Holtkamp pipe organ in Paul Hall at the Juilliard School on Wednesday. Happily, Mr. Jacobs, a personable speaker as well as performer, offered his own take on Reger from the stage, calling him a composer “near and dear to my heart.” Then he showed why.

He started with a work he would ordinarily use at the end, he said, Reger’s wildly virtuosic tribute to Bach, the Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H (those letters, in the German musical alphabet, representing the notes B flat, A, C, B natural). Mr. Jacobs had spoken of Reger’s wit and irony, which came through beautifully in the simple hushed start of the fugue, soon to grow loud, hectic and huge. The effect was undercut only slightly by a brief outburst caused by a pedal slip.

After two works by Bach, a chorale prelude and the Prelude and “Fiddle” Fugue in D minor (BWV 539), Mr. Jacobs turned back to Reger, with an ineffably tender Intermezzo (Op. 80, No. 10) and the huge Introduction, Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme.

Mr. Jacobs called the variations piece, lasting some 30 to 35 minutes (“depending on whether or not I know all the notes”), a fantasy fairy tale, by turns gentle, furious and magical. He also spoke of the difficulties of choosing the registrations to color so vast and varied a creation, saying that he had worked at the stops till 3 a.m.

It was time well spent. There really were moments when the sound turned magical amid the many when it roared.

The audience — by now Reger lovers all, it seemed — responded with a clamorous ovation. “That was intense,” Mr. Jacobs allowed, seeming surprised himself by just how intense. So he offered what he called a little fugue as an encore, Bach’s A minor (from BWV 543): little only by comparison and wonderfully played.

The only significant blemish on the evening was a thudding, rumbling noise coming into the hall during Bach’s lovely, intimate prelude on “Von Gott Will Ich Nicht Lassen” (BWV 658), evidently caused by dancers on a floor above.