Hear the Harrison & Harrison Organ at Christ Church at a Free April 25 Evening of Rare and Revered Music
Christ Church Greenwich will host an organ recital on Saturday, April 25, from 5:00 to 6:15 pm in the Main Sanctuary, presented by Director of Music Jamie Hitel. The recital is open to the public free of charge, with a livestream option available.
Hitel has served as Director of Music at Christ Church for eighteen years. He trained in England and served as Organ Scholar and Director of Chapel Music at Cambridge University for four years. His work in Greenwich has centered on building a comprehensive sacred music program while maintaining an active performance schedule. He also oversaw the installation of the church’s Harrison & Harrison organ, an instrument modeled on the English cathedral tradition and designed for both liturgical and concert use.
Saturday’s program brings together five works spanning the Baroque, Romantic, and twentieth-century repertoire, moving across national traditions while maintaining a coherent musical arc.
The recital opens with Max Reger’s Toccata in D minor (Op. 59), one of the most demanding works in the organ repertoire. Reger spent his career fusing Bach’s contrapuntal rigor with the chromatic harmonic language of Brahms and Wagner, and this Toccata — drawn from the collection of twelve character pieces he published in 1901 — represents that ambition at full stretch.
J.S. Bach’s Prelude & Fugue in A major (BWV 536) follows, offering an early example of Bach’s organ writing: lighter and more Italian in character than the great dramatic works, its Prelude free and improvisatory in spirit and its Fugue unfolding as a graceful triple-time dance.
The centerpiece of the program is Et resurrexit (Theme, Fantasy & Fugue) by Kenneth Leighton, one of Britain’s finest twentieth-century composers. Composed in 1966, the work is built on a four-note motif that undergoes continuous transformation across three movements, expressing in Leighton’s own words “the individual’s struggle for belief in the miracle of the resurrection.” It builds to a final blaze of glory of considerable power.
Oskar Lindberg’s Gammal fäbodpsalm provides a moment of stillness at the heart of the program. The Swedish composer wrote this brief meditation in 1936 at his summer farm in Dalarna, setting an ancient mountain herding melody with luminous simplicity. It has become one of Scandinavia’s best-loved pieces of organ music, though it appears rarely in American programming.
The recital concludes with Franz Liszt’s Prelude & Fugue on B-A-C-H, one of the great monuments of the organ repertoire. Liszt — born in Hungary in 1811, a connection that feels timely given Hungary’s parliamentary elections earlier this month — composed the work for the dedication of the organ at Merseburg Cathedral in 1855 as an act of homage to Bach. The four letters of Bach’s name correspond to musical pitches in German notation, and Liszt builds from that slender motif to something of near-orchestral scale.
The April 25 recital is free and open to all. Christ Church Greenwich is located at 254 East Putnam Avenue. A livestream will also be available.
