Technical and interpretive flair were paramount in David Adams's organ recital last Sunday night at St Michael's Church, Dun Laoghaire. This was all the more striking given the variety of compositional styles in this programme of Germanic and French music from the Baroque and Romantic periods.
In Reger's early Fugue in D minor, Op 7 No 3 and Liszt's Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, the style of rubato sometimes seemed influenced by Baroque concepts. Nevertheless, the playing for each country and period was apt, partly because of a much smoother touch and broader phrasing in the Romantic music. Well-known pieces came across in an independent way, not beholden to tradition, but not ignorant of it either. The prelude in Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C BWV547 had a flamboyant, springing rhythm which cast the piece in a very different light from that produced by the more common steady pacing. This performance, and an ethereal Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr BWV662, were thought-provoking.
The rigour of variation technique and the freedom of Liszt's rhapsodic style coexist uneasily in Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen. David Adams made this long piece a restless quest for the stability found in the final chorale - perhaps the most structurally intelligent view of this music I have encountered.
