In Performance: Peter Latona on Organ

Web-only review:

Organ Summer Series's Satisfying Finale
by Joan Reinthaler

The summer-long 13-concert organ festival at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception closed on Sunday with a recital by the basilica's organist and music director, Peter Latona.

The Möller organ (rebuilt in 2001 for a more ideal balance) in the basilica's vast marble-bedecked Upper Church is capable of remarkably transparent sonorities as well as the requisite tidal waves of sound, and Latona, who knows this instrument and this space as well as anyone, chose a program that explored many of their possibilities.
(read more after the jump)

A prelude by baroque composer Nicolaus Bruhns, a hymn by Langlais on the familiar "Te Deum" chant and a Vierne Toccata were muscular in their presentation with sharply drawn lines, moments of light and clean textures. A Frescobaldi Toccata, however, the Duruflé Scherzo, Op. 2 (exquisitely French in its flavor), and the "Deux Chorals à Notre Dame" by Reveyron were quieter, more meditative and meandering. Latona played the nave's reverberations perfectly, giving phrases just the time they needed to speak and to be heard.

The evening's most dramatic moments and the most complete exposition of the organ's possibilities, however, came in Latona's own "Improvisations on the Proper Texts of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist." The 20-minute, four-movement set was a vivid soundscape that focused sometimes on the rhythmic character of the texts and sometimes on its visual evocation, and that built to a powerful and throbbing (the visceral effect of 64-foot organ pipe vibrations) conclusion.

-- Joan Reinthaler

By Anne Midgette  |  September 2, 2009; 6:30 AM ET  | Category:  local reviews
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