NAJI HAKIM, successor to Messiaen at la Trinite in Paris, made his Irish debut last night on the organ of the National Concert Hall. His programme for the Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival opened with a genuflection to Bach, a technically impressive hut academically dryish performance of the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, BWV564, which took flight in the crisp, unflagging handling of the fugue.
Two of Hakim's own works, Canticum and Vexilla regis prodeunt, portrayed him as a composer who is not very selective about his material but is thoroughly secure in the light, almost dandified treatment he gives it. In these pieces he seems overburdened by his, own facility, as many an organist/composer has been before him. Their very considerable demands, however, bring out the very best in Hakim the performer there's a delightful cat like agility and spring to his playing which gets unleashed to its fullest in his own compositions.
His handling of Franck's Priere I found surprisingly stiff and four squarish he was altogether more sympathetic in his treatment of the backward looking Suite evocatrice by Tournemire. The closing improvisation on submitted themes blew hot and cold with the familiar bluster and repose. Hakim stirred up quite a storm, but, as so often in live organ improvisations, there was altogether too much of the fake drama, inflated rhetoric and contrasting, calm islands of sweet talk of an opposition spokesperson's speechifying on budget day.
The day's lunchtime recital was given in the Chapel of TCD by Fergal Caulfield, joint second prizewinner at the 1994 Dublin International Organ Competition. His all Irish programme consisted of works by Walter Beckett (Occasional Voluntary), Gerald Barry (Sur les Pointes and The Chair), Ian Wilson (In manus tuas), Raymond Deane (Idols) and Paul Hayes (Coda).
The most successful of these works are those by Barry and Deane. Caulfield didn't quite manage to gauge Idols' exploitation of expectancy and waiting, but he offered an altogether firmer account of Barry's outrageously difficult (indeed, sometimes impossible seeming) The Chair than was heard during the last organ competition, for which it served as an obligatory test piece.
