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Organist Cameron Carpenter: mysteries revealed

Last weekend’s concert pair by the Santa Barbara Symphony at the Granada Theatre with guest artist, organist Cameron Carpenter, added a short but fitting work to the printed program, Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody for Strings, a tender, hauntingly elegiac folk-like melody, performed by the orchestra in tribute to the ongoing heroic fight by the Ukrainian people to keep their independence.
Soaked metaphorically in Ukraine’s blood and history, Melody helped all in the room to reflect on, and be in the moment with, Ukraine’s existential struggle. Special guests Tetiana and Stepan Kisilevich, who had escaped the war zone two weeks earlier, were in the house Saturday night to watch their daughter, Myroslava, play the piano part in Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony No. 3, which brought the concert to a rousing close.
Interestingly, the two main works on the program, selected by conductor Nir Kabaretti long before COVID and the invasion of Ukraine, nevertheless suited perfectly, the present historical circumstance.

Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani in G Minor (1938), while light and Parisian in so many ways, also has its dark side; the impending world war and the death of Poulenc’s lover (most agree), composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud. Camille Saint-Saëns’ stunning Organ Symphony No. 3 in C Minor (1886) has its own sub-basement of grief, the death of both his infant sons in 1878, a loss that haunted, with gossamer melancholy, the composer’s remaining compositional output.
Presented in collaboration with Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and with Sonic Boom! as its marketing hook, last Saturday’s concert enjoyed a full house.

Guest artist, organist Cameron Carpenter, did not disappoint, opening the concert with a solo, Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major BWV 552 (St. Anne - 1739). Sitting at the console of his newest traveling electronic organ, a magnificent beast planted stage left in front of the orchestra with phalanxes of speaker towers arranged along the back wall of the orchestra shell above and behind the players, Carpenter’s intensely focused and personal interpretation of this monumental construction, based on the mysticism of the Holy Trinity (3) was, well, mind boggling.

Taking the art of embellishment to heaven and back again, Carpenter improvised, noodled, tweaked, and toggled around Bach’s written superstructure at every opportunity, spinning a cotton candy dervish of Baroque performance practice. Exactly.
Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani in G Minor (1938) is in seven sections, played in one musical arc. A work of sublime coloration, and not so subtle dissonance (for a reason), the composer uses his 20th century harmonic palette to express apprehension at the approach of World War II, as well as his profound melancholy (the composer almost went into the priesthood) at the loss of composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud.

A leader of the movement known as Les Six, this work, while doggedly tuneful and straightforward in its way, is nevertheless colored in tears, and tempered by an impending, if still distant storm.
Cameron Carpenter’s approach to the work - a trance-like, razor-focused delicacy - examined each chord with scholarly care, particularly the dissonant ones, eliciting their secret beauties, like cracking open the interior of an amethyst geode. Improvising embellishments here and there, Carpenter stamped his unique personal imprimatur on the piece. A treat. The Santa Barbara Symphony under Kabaretti’s elegant baton, created both velvet and ominous sound textures, all within Poulenc’s clever conceit of a gigantic French Overture.
“I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again.” Thus spoke Camille Saint-Saëns about his Organ Symphony No. 3, composed in 1886 at the height of his career. Considered one of the greatest organists of his age, a virtuoso pianist and composer, his enormous and technically complicated Symphony No. 3 is more a sprawling tone poem, than four-movement symphony.

Conducting from memory, Kabaretti turned in a stellar performance. The orchestra, most of whom having played this glorious war horse on several prior occasions, clearly enjoyed themselves, though the tough bits, as always, were exhausting. Cameron Carpenter, utterly still and pensive when not playing, sprang into action as the score required, giving the piece its sonic boom audiences love, while also managing to sprinkle improvised embellishments throughout, with what sounded like a completely improvised cadenza. Splendid!

Daniel Kepl/Performing Arts Review