Niklas Jahn (organ)
Recital
rec. live, 19-20 September 2023, Musashino Civic Cultural Hall, Tokyo, Japan
Naxos 8.574649 [62]
Niklas Jahn won first prize in the 9th International Organ Competition in Musashino-Tokyo in 2023. Naxos recorded his recital performances and have now released a selection. Some of the repertoire was required by the Competition but Jahn has added intelligently to it. The whole makes for engrossing listening.
The first piece, the Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540, is a real challenge for any organist. The Toccata is the longest Bach wrote in the Toccata and Fugue format and has a formidably difficult pedal part, which alternates with an extended canon in a sort of concertante format. Jahn sustains this dialogue brilliantly, making light of the virtuoso demands of the pedal solo. The double fugue that follows is vibrantly characterised so that one listens for each entry in anticipation. Jahn adopts a slightly more stately tempo than some players, but it absolutely works: the gains in clarity are welcome and the majestic conclusion has real impact. A minor point, but it would have been nice if the Fugue had been separately tracked on the Disc.
Next is a single Chorale Prelude from the set of 11 that Brahms composed late in life in 1896, Herzlich tut mich verlangen. It was one of the nominated pieces for the Competition, but it feels a calm and studied progression from the Bach here. Jahn brings out Brahms’s delicate voicing with wonderful sensitivity so that the hymn melody seems to emerge almost magically from the tenor line and the development of the chorale has real momentum. It’s a refreshing change from the doom-laden accounts one sometimes hears where the choice of registrations is so muddy they nullify Brahms’s colouration.
There are two pieces from Messiaen’s L’Ascension next. In general, I’m not a huge fan of selected movements from Messiaen’s pieces being played in recital because I think understanding the overall framework and hearing the development of the work as whole is essential to its appreciation. Otherwise, what we tend to get are striking but unmoored exercises in colour and rhythm, which can lack coherence. The third section from L’Ascension, Transports de joie, was required for the Competition however (it’s often, wrong-headedly I feel, played as a Voluntary) and I think Jahn intelligently made virtue out of necessity by following it with the next, Prière du Christ montant vers son Père. We get an interesting contrast but also some continuity and meaningfulness, Jahn showing wonderful touch and acuity in the toccata-like Transports and conjuring a beautiful, rapt tableau in Prière, where the wonderfully sustained final chord feels like an authentic spiritual resolution.
Zsigmond Szathmáry’s Feuertaufe has Messiaenic connotations in that it’s inspired by the events of Pentecost, in particular the baptismal fire of the Holy Spirit, as its title suggests. It very much has its own distinctive character however, and in formal terms owes more to Buxtehude and Bach, being written as a toccata in five sections. Its sound is bracingly modern and individual and Jahn’s rendering of the virtuosic contrasts has an infectious exhilaration.
Next, we hear just the Fugue from Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D minor BWV 539, another Competition requirement. I wish that it would have been possible for the complete work to be included, but given the Fugue is an arrangement of the one that forms part of the Violin Sonata No. 1, and was tacked onto the Prelude, it’s justifiable as a standalone piece. In any event, I wouldn’t want to be without Jahn’s incisive performance of it, which confirms his virtues as a player of Bach evident from the opening work.
It was a nice touch of Jahn’s to include a Japanese composer in his recital and Toshio Hosokawa’s Cloudscape provides a compellingly different soundworld to any of the other pieces. The organ portrays the shō, a Japanese mouth organ, one of the instruments used in traditional Japanese court music. The right hand, left hand and pedals each represent an individual shō and their pitch levels, converging, diverging and crisscrossing, make for an extraordinary tapestry of sound, expertly realised by Jahn. There is an eerie sense of timelessness to the piece, which ebbs away at its conclusion so that one is unsure where the music ends and silence begins.
Jahn ends with the famous Final from Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 6. It’s a familiar choice of recitalists to end with of course because of its vitality, sonic exuberance and the sheer excitement that builds as the piece gathers momentum before the jaw-droppingly difficult pedal passages that mark its conclusion. Jahn plays up the virtuosic characteristics of the piece without losing the sense of line that Vierne weaves throughout. It’s magnificent playing. I don’t think anyone listening to Jahn’s performance of the Vierne or indeed any of the pieces included would be surprised to hear that he won the first prize or that he was more recently appointed organist of the Frauenkirche in Dresden.
The Musashino Civic Cultural Hall where the competition took place boasts a relatively modern instrument made by the renowned Danish firm Marcussen & Søn in 1984. It’s a superb organ, able to sound completely authentic in both the Bach and Messiaen and support the dazzling variety of registrations employed by Jahn throughout. Its sound has been very well captured by Naxos.
Dominic Hartley
Contents
JS Bach (1685-1750)
Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540 (before 1731)
Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 539: Fugue (c. 1720)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
11 Chorale Preludes, Op. 122: No. 10. Herzlich tut mich verlangen (1896)
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
L’Ascension: III. Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne,
IV. Prière du Christ montant vers son Père (1933-34)
Zsigmond Szathmáry (b.1939)
Feuertaufe (2004)
Toshio Hosokawa (b.1955)
Cloudscape (2000)
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
Organ Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 59: V. Final (1930)
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