Portland Symphony Final Concert of the Year Features the Organ



by Carl Smith

The 100 year old Kotzschmar organ was featured last night before going out of commission for a couple of years for a multi-million dollar overhaul. It sounded great but some major aspects of the organ need restoration. When it was built in 1912 it was the second largest organ in the world and it has been enlarged four times since then to a total of nearly 7000 pipes. Brad, Josh and Portia, Dave, Amy, Demos and Jen, Katie and I attended the concert, which had also been performed on Sunday afternoon.

The brief opening modern work, Toward the Splendid City, by Danielpour was extremely loud from where most of us were sitting not far from the stage and this made it hard for me to enjoy. However, the Symphonie Concertante for Organ and Orchestra by Joseph Jongen, though also loud, sounded wonderful. I attended a Portland Symphony performance of this piece with the legendary organist Virgil Fox in 1974 and this was the first performance by the orchestra of the work since then. Virgil Fox was amazing but I felt that last night's performance by the Portland Municipal Organist Ray Cornils provided a more satisfying balance between the organ and the orchestra. Dave commented that he was impressed by how the sound ranged from just barely audible to perhaps 120 decibels as the extremely powerful organ at times would play much louder than the entire orchestra playing at its loudest.

The Saint-Saens Symphony #3 in C minor, nicknamed the "Organ Symphony", makes no use of the organ until the second part of the first of its two movements and then mostly for orchestral color. However, in the second and final movement the organ plays a series of extremely powerful chords that have to be experienced to be believed. Saint-Saens also included a piano but compared to the organ the piano is barely audible. The "Organ Symphony" is one of the great classics with irresistible melodies and awe inspiring organ passages, and the Symphony played it beautifully.

We are looking forward to hearing the 192k/24 bit digital recordings of this concert made with a system designed and donated to the Portland Symphony by Transparent Audio last fall. It will be our first opportunity to hear how the new recording system captures the sound of the mighty Kotzschmar organ.