The organ at Symphony Hall has been a source of waxing and waning pride and purpose from the Hall’s opening weeks in 1900 to the current moment. As part of the ongoing Symphony Hall 125 celebrations, UK- and LA-based organist James McVinnie has crafted a program with selections from the inaugural season’s organ recitals — timeless works by Bach, Schumann, Wagner and Franck — complemented by new music from iconic American composers Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, and a world premiere by inti figgis-vizueta. Tickets for the October 10th at 7:30 concert are HERE. And consider the Anniversary Cocktails. More facts and figures follow our interview with McVinnie.
FLE: Cognoscenti may revere the Boston Symphony Hall organ, but getting crowds to attend an organ concert in the United States is not easy.
JM: I believe that this is one of the very first recitals for a long time in Boston Symphony Hall.
In the past 20 years James David Christie played two, and one each from Felix Hell, and Paul Jacobs, but some of those included the orchestra as well as organ solos. For straight recitals, this graph tells an interesting story. There were dozens in the 60s and then virtually nothing. In the days of E Power Biggs and Virgil Fox, the general public seemed to have an appetite for recitals on civic organs and in weekly radio shows.
Do you think that because half of the concert is new music it might attract a crowd of non-organists?
I hope so yes! I aim in my programming always to present the best possible repertoire for the instrument which reflects my musical personality and musical interests. The sequence in my first half is a through-connected selection of all-American contemporary music by Meredith Monk, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly and Philip Glass. I’m also playing an arrangement I’ve made of a piece of ambient music by Sufjan Stevens, ‘The Year of Our Lord’. Several of the pieces on the first half are taken from my recent album Dreamcatcher. The high point of the first half is the world premiere of Wayra (Wind) by inti figgis-vizueta which I’ve loved learning and getting to know these past weeks. The first half concludes with Dance 4, a dizzying work by Philip Glass—one of the very few written specifically for the pipe organ.
The second half contains all works that were played in organ concerts when the hall opened in 1900, many of which are in my current playing repertoire. We have Bach’s Toccata in F BWV 540, a selection of Schumann’s Canonic Studies, Franck’s 1st Choral, and Edwin Lemare’s transcription of Wagner’s Prelude to Parsifal which caught my eye and has been a joy to learn specifically for this concert.
So, have you ever considered Edward Lemare’s transcriptions to be forbidden fruit?
They’re definitely less forbidden than they perhaps were! Originally these arrangements were vehicles to bring central European orchestral music to the masses, played on the large orchestral style Town Hall organs of the UK. Whilst they perhaps don’t match the expressive power of a symphony orchestra playing a Wagner opera at Bayreuth, if you judge them through this historical context I believe they definitely have their place. Edwin Lemare played this at his recital here in Boston and I’ve always loved the Prelude to Parsifal, so it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. It also links well with the final work in the concert by César Franck, who was deeply influenced by Wagner’s musical language. Franck’s great Choral no 1 in E is one of three such works which sit at the very pinnacle of the organ’s repertory.
Of course, Lemare served as Civic Organists in San Francisco for many years and had a huge following all over this country.
He was a fascinating figure — based principally as Organist of St Margaret’s Church Westminster (a large church adjacent to, and dwarfed by Westminster Abbey) but yes, he was really also the first traveling ‘celebrity organist’.
How did this concert come about?
Kate Nordstrum from BSO asked me to work with her to devise an organ concert based around the 1900 opening season organ recital programs. Looking back through the archival material of what was played in those concerts was fascinating — they featured many works now considered cornerstones of the organ repertoire, but then would have been very new in 1900. This formed the kernel of an idea to present a similar program for today’s audience — in the format that I’ve already explained: it’s a concert very much in two complimentary halves, the first is the here and now, and the second looks back at the rich tradition of European organ music. Physically, the organ is such an integral part of any concert hall, and making a feature concert out of it seemed a perfect opportunity.
But you didn’t choose to do an exact recreation of any particular early concert. It was more of an amalgam.
Yes, I wanted to be able to reference the broad scope of the whole of the 1900 season organ concerts, which seemed a better exercise and would produce a cogent sequence for today’s audience and for my taste. One particular highlight of one of J Wallace Goodrich’s concerts featured a short canonic study by Schumann …
Opus 56, originally for pedal piano.
Exactly — yes, and I have widened that segment with three other of the Canonic Studies. As you say, Schumann wrote his Op 56 for the pedal piano—literally, a piano with a keyboard for the feet. All the rage in Germany and France at around 1850, interest in this instrument waned and the few works written for it have now found a natural home on the organ. They are amongst the most exquisite keyboard works from the 19th century. [The pedal piano repertoire is being revived on the intended instruments. Solo example HERE, and with orchestra HERE]
***
Do you have any preference for organ builders or tracker versus electro-pneumatic?
I think it really depends on the context — I feel we are definitely moving into a more pragmatic era in relation to tracker action after the organ reform movement. Having a connection via tracker action between the keys you press and the mechanism of the instrument is obviously ideal, and key to a player’s expressive control of the instrument and connection to the music they’re playing. I love it. There are however some instances to do with console placement, but also to do with an organ’s philosophical heart, where a good electro-pneumatic organ is preferable. There are definitely organs which have been built with tracker action in the latter part of the 20th century which with hindsight should probably not have been!
And what of the other organs in Boston? Are there any you are hoping to play?
So — I’m playing two pieces by Nico Muhly taken from his work Patterns, written for the late organist John Scott, who gave the first performance at the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in 2014 at the Church of the Advent…
So you would like to you’d like to run it at the Church of the Advent?
I’d be thrilled of course! It’s difficult to over-estimate the influence John Scott had over so many of us in the organ playing and wider musical world. I first met him when I was 16, when I shadowed the music department at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1999 after my school exams. It was an altogether different era, but seeing his sheer brilliance and force of musical personality over the course of that summer had a huge influence on me. I worked at St Paul’s for a period in my 20s soon after John had moved to his position as Director of Music at New York’s St Thomas Fifth Avenue — his presence was still keenly felt at St Paul’s during my time there. There is a palpable sense of melancholy to Nico’s Patterns, especially in the final strains of the last movement and I like to think of this piece as a kind of posthumous tribute to its dedicatee. It’s nice that Patterns is ‘coming home’ to Boston at this concert.
***
What is your favorite moment of organ plus orchestra?
Right now, I have Gabriella Smith’s organ concerto Breathing Forests ringing in my ears — I’ve just played it in the BBC Proms and also in Helsinki. Commissioned by LA Phil back in 2022, it’s a work of immense power and beauty and it’s been an honor to have brought it into the world over these past few years. Gabriella writes: ‘Breathing Forests is a reflection on the complex relationship between humans, forests, climate change, and fire.’
What about the Barber Toccata Festiva?
I love that piece. I’ve never actually played it, but yes, it’s terrific.
It’s got a big pedal cadenza that must be a little bit challenging.
It looks scary. I remember seeing Simon Preston—another organist taken from us too soon—playing it effortlessly at the BBC Proms many years ago.
And what about that moment when the fifth door opens in the Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle?
Fabulous, yes. There’s also a great climactic organ moment in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast —very thrilling.
***
Can organs be cool again if you’re not Cameron Carpenter?
Well … I’m not Cameron Carpenter.
And surely the organ has never not been cool? — it’s certainly captured the imagination of the greatest composers of all time down the centuries.
For me, it’s about playing the best possible repertoire and to be at the height of your powers as an instrumentalist and interpreter. That, in turn also relates to my relationship to commissioning; it’s crucial for me to have a body of living, breathing work that’s been written for me, by composers who are my friends, and for this work to sit alongside the earlier repertoire I play from the 17th and 18th centuries. It’s a privilege to play such an awesome instrument and I hope many will come to Symphony Hall next Friday.
And I gather there is another connection between you and the BSO via LA.
I’ve performed many times with Los Angeles Philharmonic, where of course Chad Smith worked before coming to Boston as BSO President and CEO. The LA Phil commissioned many large-scale organ works I’ve been involved with — including concertos by Nico Muhly, Sam Adams and Gabriella Smith as well as Philip Glass’s Symphony 12. And, of course, they have a wonderful instrument in Disney Hall, and the organ there is very much a central part of their programming.
LA seems to be interested in organs. Perhaps if your recital is a success, we will be hearing the SH organ more during Chad’s time here. But I hope there’s no danger that he asks Frank Gehry to set the display pipes of our rather formal Hutchings/Æolian-Skinner/Foley-Baker organ all akimbo as in Disney Hall!
Click HERE for the spreadsheet on organ recital frequency by decade over 125 years.
Click HERE for the organ’s stoplist.
Find Opening Organ Recital program HERE.
We thank BSO Archivist Bridget Carr for her work gathering graphics and statistics for this feature.
Friday, October 10,
Boston Symphony Orchestra presents
The SH Organ at 125
Tickets: HERE
Meredith MONK Ellis Island
Julia Wolf: Earring
Sufjan Stevens: The Year of Our Lord
inti figgis-vizueta: new work
Nico Muhly: Palindromes & Very Fast Music from Patterns
Philip Glass: Dance 4
intermission |
J.S. Bach: Toccata in F Major, BWV 540i ◇
Schumann: selections from Six Canonic Studies, Op. 56
Wagner: Prelude to Parsifal (transc. Lemare) ❊
Franck: Chorale No. 1 in E Major ✢
◇ played by J Wallace Goodrich on March 21 1901
❊ played by Edwin Lemare on October 29 1901
✢ played by J Wallace Goodrich on March 28 1901
Readers can expect a review of the McVinnie performance tomorrow.
Comment by Lee Eiseman — October 11, 2025 at 9:43 pm
I don’t know if a review will be forthcoming for this performance. I was disappointed by the dryness of the acoustic for that organ. The minimalist repertoire during the first half of the program was largely navel-gazing and I walked out during the Philip Glass. The second half with Bach and Franck were better. It seemed odd that several pieces in the first half were arrangements of piano compositions. Overall a disappointment, partly a waste of McVinnie’s talents.
Comment by Tertullian — October 11, 2025 at 9:19 pm
Interesting…45 in the 60s, but after the spring of ’67, nothing for the next 37 years.
The 1960s list is remarkable, including three recitals by new-to-Harvard John Ferris.
Comment by David Moran — October 8, 2025 at 5:38 pm