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A Summertime Organ Concert in Bergen
Original text: http://www.klangkirche.info/10/100718index.htm
Summer – an organ – the South? The program included an Italian composer, a Baroque organ and a warm Berger church. The only question was, what had Federico Andreoni, the Italian guest organist, packed in his bags for the purpose of a summer concert? Things started off with Girolamo Frescobaldi’s fifth Toccata as well as his Elevation Toccata. Andreoni, master student of William Porter in Montreal, is not an advocate of the loud and fast school. Instead he first set to with intensive foreshadowing whose effects thereby musically modernized Frescobaldi. Federico Andreoni clarified the different Toccata types of the Italian Baroque and then played the Toccata VII of Michelangelo Rossi. This was surely also the liveliest of the Toccatas presented here – and although the oldest, it became through the use of chromatics the most modern.
The transition to the next group of pieces was well thought out: North Germany and southern dances. By Buxtehude’s Ciaccona in E minor any reserve was put aside: dancerly, at times powerful, at times measured. The exuberant joy of the dances was also clearly evident in the next piece by Cabanilles, sparkling with the additional sound colours, from the crumhorn across the underlining intermediate tones up to the strong flute accents.
After the intermission Andreoni offered a “pure” Bach – beginning with the trio sonata Nr. 6 G major. He has long been preoccupied with this work: already at the age of 25 in Lugano, Andreoni over 16 evenings played all of the works by Bach. This experience allowed his interpretation to cast the, unfortunately not numerous, audience completely under his spell. The very intelligent registry as well as the starkly differentiated play enabled the listeners to follow the varying and yet not immediately obvious tone lines.
Andreoni lit the concert’s explosive finale with Toccata, Adagio and Fugue C major. From a small set piece he developed a fireworks, inserting a short pause with the Adagio, only to take off again in the final Fugue which developed into a magnificent closure.
With a brief encore he took leave of his enthusiastic spectators.
