The novelty of a new acoustic hall, the sonic richness of the Klais organ and a flamboyant entertainer combine to produce a splendiferous performance which one might not otherwise associate with a classical music recital. Organ recitals are pretty much a rarity in Singapore, and perhaps the opening of the Esplanade might serve as an impetus for a new series of organ music as well as the development of local music audiences.

The spaciousness of the Esplanade concert hall ambience - configured to maximum bloom for the evening - more than matched the attractiveness of Carlo Curley's playing. Curley presented a free-ranging musical cornucopia ranging from transcriptions showing off the colours of the instrument to serious repertoire, interspersed with personal commentary. In his ebullient, talkative fashion, he struck up an easy rapport with the mostly-neophyte audience, which comprised quite a bit of what ad agencies would describe as blue-haired prime target As and Bs with lofty disposable incomes.

Having organists striking up a conversation with the audience certainly helps belie the stereotype of organ recitals as dreary, droning affairs. It's not a new idea - recalling Ingmar Bergman's 1978 "chamber movie", Autumn Sonata, we find Liv Ullmann's character, Eva, saying that, "In the parish, I often play the organ. Last month I had a musical evening; I played and talked about each piece."

Curley's approach to his playing was characteristically extrovert: huge splashes of over-the-top gusto, with oases of surprising wistfulness every now and then. Such a zealous approach worked well enough for the big gaudy numbers, though I think some players would have taken a more mannered approach to the quaintly baroque Bachs and Buxtehude.

Florid mannerisms aside, Curley took a fairly predictable reading of the music. For the most part, he drove the music forward with an excessive tendency for speed, rather than letting it unfold at its own pace - even after adjusting one's tempo for the transplantation of a non-organ work onto the organ. The seven-minute Entry of the Guests from Wagner's Tannhäuser, for instance, was over in three and a half in his hands, albeit substantially abridged. And it certainly didn't justify rushing through MacDowell's To a Wild Rose and Massenet's Méditation. The music wasn't given the time it needed to breathe and the audience an opportunity to enjoy the aural landscape.

Concerning transcriptions: a comment about the Bach Sinfonia to Cantata No.29 here might be instructive. This was originally the Praeludium movement of Bach's own Third Violin Partita, rewritten as an opening instrumental flourish for the Cantata (for a chamber group of two oboes, three trumpets, timpani, organ and strings). Its popularity, as evidenced here, have led to its being borrowed, adapted or otherwise reworked by others.

Rachmaninov, for instance, took three movements of the Partita, including the Praeludium, and turned it completely into his own showpiece, pushing the violin's melody line around like nobody's business, replete with Russian chimes, double-fisted chords and his own flavour of counterpoint. Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops have also recorded an all-strings transcription of this work, which one might possibly perish of a fatal overdose of Mantovanian schmaltz listening to it.

We need to remember that the original solo violin work was a study in the temperament of the violin, with Bach using technical elements to reveal and intensify the emotional effects of the musical argument, and not to detract from it. The work returns full circle to its instrumental roots in Curley's own hand: a third-generation realization of a transcription of a transcription.

The part of the solo voice was bright and complex-percussive, realized with spontaneous phrasing and flounced through with all the exuberant devil-may-care effluence of a show-stopper. (Not unlike the famous Moogmeister Wendy Carlos's own synth arrangement of this work, given an identical electricized treatment on Switched-On Bach 2000, Telarc CD-80323.) As Curley said in his introduction, "This piece proves, beyond all doubt, that Bach invented rock-and-roll," and his rendition served just exactly that.

On the other hand, if there can be too much of a good thing, it was his habit of pandering to the audience by playing excessive rallentandos at the end of every loud work. (Although I will forgive the rallentando at the ending of the Bach BWV 564 juggernaut, coming as it does so abruptly after a mellow Adagio.) But otherwise, Curley never belabours a point - full marks for impeccable technique and imaginative registration - which the neophyte audience seemed to enjoy immensely.

Apart from an obsession with the dulciana in the Solo division, his selection of instrumental shades and timbres was resourceful and stimulatingly varied (if somewhat predictable), from soft stops for the Wild Rose and Londonderry Air, to rotund, fire-spitting Bombardes in the marches by Wagner and Saint-Saëns that closed their respective halves of the programme. Purists might well shudder at the quasi-instrumental sounds simulated by the organ, but I think the more important thing is how much of the spirit of the original which Curley captured.

There is no denying that he did attempt to recreate much of the nuances of the music, such as the comtemplative exposition of the Massenet Méditation. But there is just no getting around the fact that this intermezzo is an intimate tete-à-tete between the solo violinist and the listener, whereas the organ's voice, however hushed, is still a demagogue bellowing from the pulpit. The less-programmatic pieces were, I felt, more successful in the execution: Stanley's short Concerto and Guilmant's brilliant reworking of the popular Aria from Handel's Concerto Grosso Op.6 No.12.

No surprise, then, that the cornerstone of the evening's programme, for me at least, came in the second-half with the Langlais, Buxtehude and Franck's Fantaisie. The Franck was a last-minute change from the originally-planned Mozart F minor Fantasy, K 608. (Curiously, the Fantaisie comes as the first of Trois pièces of 1878; the third item of this set is a Pièce héroïque in B minor.)

The other-worldly figurations of the Langlais immediately provoked the lady seated next to me to remark to her companion, about three bars into the music, "Oh dear, it's modern." (As if the rest of us were deaf.) The Buxtehude, Curley's "surprise piece", was a florid Baroque miniature, and the set was rounded off with a exquisite and insightful exploration of Franck's Fantaisie - a gamut of emotions running through different sections of the music, each imbued by Curley with its own individual character, and yet forming part of the whole.

Curley's day at the office was rounded off the evening with a pair of encores: a Wurlitzer-style rendition of John Philip Sousa's The Liberty Bell March, which elicited knowing murmurs from the audience, followed by a pert little Adagio, written originally for two pianos by the Czech composer Dušek, transcribed for keyboard by Curley's sometime mentor, Sir George Thalberg-Ball. A not-inconsiderable crowd, at Curley's invitation, then queued in the foyer to get autographs and shake hands with the charismatic orgelmeister. A valedictory display of the organ that lived up to its billing in every way - albeit one marred by poor audience behavior.

Organic Matters

What are your impressions of the Klais in the Esplanade?
It is magnificent ! I's a very colourful instrument, capable of playing from very soft colours to a huge sound, like the Second Coming in Panavision. That's why Mozart described it as "...the king of all instruments." The organ has a bit of everything in it.

What is your imperative in presenting these concerts?
I think we organists are a rare breed. It's not that easy to find many people who do this for a living, not counting those in academic or church positions, I mean. I have all the respect for church music, but it can give people a completely wrong impression of what organ music can be. [mimics yawn] We can take the boredom out of organ music, and yet keeping it properly dignified.

By this, you mean...
Traditionally, organs have been associated with the church. We used to say that in church, organs are used to "play you in and play you out," that is, to accompany hymns, at weddings, funerals... Now, I fully appreciate the role which organs play in the church, and the influence of the church on organ music, Bach, Buxtehude, and all that. I respect that dignity, but at the same time, I feel that it also deserves a place at the forefront of the concert hall. I like to take the core of the organ out, and let the audience see the flight deck, where I'm, like, flying the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet on stage.

So there is an element of showmanship involved.
I once watched Liberace, the consummate entertainer, in this huge complex with thousands and thousands of people in the audience. He had, on each one of his fingers, this huge chunk of jewellery. There must have been like five million dollars of rings of jewels on his hands, the Sultan of Persia could not have matched his collection of kitsch. But if you took away all the beads, fur, sequins, boas, feathers, rings and jewels, you still couldn't hide the talent. I mean, he could play - he played Rachmaninov's Third Concerto, plus a bit of the cadenza, with the fat diamond rings on his fingers. Now I could not ever play like that - I don't even wear a watch, because it throws my balance off - but that man had prodigious technique, I tell you that, even if he chose to play what I'd call "bodega music." But if my recordings sold one tenth of what he sold, I would be very satisfied indeed.

Could you comment on the programme for the "Organ Extravaganza"?
They let me to put together a programme to take the yawn factor out of it, but I've also kept a bit of the standard favourites. But it's also going to be a serious repertoire, slightly eclectic, but there's also something for everyone: Massenet, Mozart, Bach. And I always like to start with something quiet, almost inaudible, because it forces the audience to listen very carefully right from the start.

Sometimes it's the music that sells itself.
That's right ! Now I'm playing on Saturday evening - that puts me up against, how many channels do you have on cable in Singapore ? Forty ? Fifty ? And there's Saturday night football ! I've heard that so far we've sold about seventy-five percent, and I hope that with a push, we can get a hundred percent for the night. This is also a new hall, and people will be interested.

What are your thoughts on transcriptions, given that quite a few items on your programme are not original music written for the organ?
Transcriptions will only add to and increase the huge amount of music out there which have been written for the organ. A lot of people hear classical music not in their original forms, but as an arrangement. I once heard Horowitz play Schubert's Erlkönig in transcription - it helps if you know the story, and I did - I was literally on the edge of my seat as the king catches up with the boy... [tips couch forward precariously] That Steinway must have bled to death, he was hammering the keyboard so hard ! I will never forget that concert as long as I live.

I've noticed - part of the programme seems to involve a number of blind composers - Jean Langlais, John Stanley, Handel, and Bach, in his last year... [looks at programme] I didn't think of it like that, of course, but you're right. It was not intentional, I assure you, it just happened that way.

You have made a number of musical recordings for some of the big labels, but they're impossible to find.
I have done a number of recordings for Decca, which have sold a ton. But for some inexplicable reason, they've deleted it after two years, even though they were selling well. They ought to reissue them... But that's why I've also decided never to record for a major label again - not unless it's a special project - because after two years, poof ! Gone. I also had a book published by HarperCollins in 1997, and after three years, they took it off the shelves, I don't know why.

Photo of Carlo Curley was obtained from the Carlo Curley website.

Benjamin Chee is not mad north-north-west, although he sometimes cannot resist making obscure allusions to Shakespeare. (And "The West Wing".)

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