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CHRISTOPHER HERRICK - INTERNATIONAL CONCERT ORGANIST
:. The Wall Street Journal ... Personal Journal ... Time Off / Backstage ... Christopher Herrick [29 October 2004]
ONE OF EUROPE'S most acclaimed organists is 62-year-old Christopher Herrick. Formerly of Westminster Abbey, Mr. Herrick now performs all over the world, his playing universally praised for its clarity, brilliance and apparent ease. He has recorded for a number of labels, including Decca, Virgin Classics and Hyperion -- for which has made more than 30 CDs, including the complete works of Bach and the popular 10-CD Organ Fireworks series. These prize-winning discs have been recorded on some of the greatest organs in the whole world.
During a stop in Trondheim, Norway, to perform on the historic organ of Nidaros Cathedral (as part of the St. Olav's Festival), the lean, white-haired musician paused to chat with Benjamin Ivry at Mr. Herrick's hotel overlooking the Niv River.
Q: As a boy, you sang in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. What did you learn there?
A: I recall when I was 12, the St. Paul's organist, Sir John Dykes Bower, asked me to accompany him to the cathedral organ loft to turn pages for him for a BBC recording. Normally he was a very straightforward player, not flashy; but that day he was flashy, using the full resources of the magnificent St Paul’s Cathedral organ, and I was suddenly sure that’s what I wanted to do.
Q: As a young musician did you listen to recordings of organists like E. Power Biggs or Albert Schweitzer?
A: I've always been a bit arrogant about organ recordings. There were a few on 78s and most were badly performed. I'm sure Schweitzer had his virtues but I'd never imitate his way of playing. I tell students to listen to lots of people play, but don't be a clone.
Q: Are there national schools of organ playing? Do French organists play differently than the British or Germans?
A: The organ is becoming more and more internationalized. There tends to be a kind of consensus way of playing. Germans want to play more like Frenchmen or British; they look beyond their boundaries to learn things. We organists have a mutual admiration for different ways of doing things.
Q: You've recorded a two-CD set of the music of the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621), whom Glenn Gould preferred to Bach. Was Gould right?
A: I can't say I prefer him to Bach, but Sweelinck is a sadly neglected master. Sweelinck is a real link between the English Elizabethan composers and Bach, because he taught the great German composers before Bach, like Samuel Scheidt. Sweelinck's music is wonderful because it's so clever and exciting.
Q: Yet to record his music, you had to devise a different, quite painful way of moving your fingers on the keyboard.
A: I probably already had some tensions (in the hands), which most musicians would admit to -- a form of repetitive stress injury. . . . To play in Sweelinck's old style, not using the thumb very much, I was doing new things with the other fingers; and only when I went in for physical therapy did I finally adapt.
Q: In 1998 you played the complete organ works of J.S. Bach, 14 concerts on 14 consecutive days. Did you ever think that Bach himself never had to do this, and it's too much?
A: No. Bach is just so totally satisfying, that even his less-than-top works are so exciting.
Q: How did you wind up recording all of Bach's organ music?
A: Wind up is right. It started by chance. I was asked by Hyperion to record Bach's trio sonatas, and the company's director, Ted Perry, even wrote to me saying, "No complete Bach, Christopher." He didn't want it. The Bach idea crept up on him, as it did on us, and finally he said, "The world needs this, Christopher."
Q: Why did you record the cycle on a modern Swiss organ made by Metzler?
A: A friend of mine who is a Swiss geologist responsible for burying nuclear waste is also a great organ fan. He went with me to see a new organ in a village church in Switzerland. It struck me that this was the right organ for the Bach trio sonatas, with lots of colors in its sound, but not a big volume. It might almost have been a chamber organ, it was so warm and beautifully balanced. As we went on doing the series we tried out other Metzlers, which were fine instruments.
Q: You enjoy playing works you call "high-cholesterol romantic concertos." What do you mean?
A: To be honest, I lifted the term from someone else; it's so neat, and gives the idea of something rich, like whipped cream.
Q: Although the organ can produce such a huge sound, do you still have to worry about outside traffic noise in recording?
A: Yes, we've had plenty of problems like that. At Halmstad someone started mowing the lawn while we were recording -- so you go and ask them to stop. . . . In Bremgarten, we got the police to stop traffic on the street for the first Bach recording. But when we returned for later recordings, they wouldn't do it. Maybe they'd had protests from shopkeepers. As a compromise, drivers were not allowed into the street near the church, but the ones parked nearby were allowed out -- slamming their doors and going into pubs with their friends.
Q: You are also a choir conductor, leading the 120-strong Twickenham Choral Society of West London. What's the difference between playing the organ and conducting a choir?
A: The organ is potentially the most unmusical of instruments because it's the most mechanical. People who play it unmusically either don't breathe, or are not rhythmically alert. It's no good just being an organist. You must have a wider experience of music -- quite apart from the fact that I'm happy to direct a choir and it gives me a ready-made social life.
Q: You were impressed when you saw the Grand Canyon. And organist and composer Olivier Messiaen was also inspired by Bryce Canyon, Utah. Are organists especially susceptible to vast natural wonders -- or just vastness, itself?
A: Maybe. My ambition as a child was to drive a great big steamroller, the kind which flattens the road. I was saving up for one through most of my boyhood, but used the money, instead, to help buy a piano. Maybe I wanted to steamroll with the organ. Might be a power complex.
Q: The fourth volume of your Organ Fireworks series includes "Passacaglia" by Dmitri Shostakovich. Would you say he was a good organ composer?
A: That music originated in Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" -- and when I first heard it in the opera house, sweat was pouring off my brow. It was so full of horror, redolent of what Shostakovich went through during the Stalinist era. His version of it for organ isn't very well written for the instrument and it needs to be edited to be playable. But it's such fantastic music.
:. Choir & Organ [May*/June 2002]
In conversation with Christopher Herrick who turned 60 this* month, Malcolm Bruno discovers a maverick who has never been afraid to take risks... ...more
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