REVIEW Warren church's former organist performs

Two of the highlights were works by French and American composers.
By ROBERT ROLLIN
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
WARREN -- First Presbyterian Church began its bicentennial celebration Sunday by welcoming home one of its own.
James Higdon, former organist at the church and professor at Hiram College from 1978-80, presented a concert of works old and new. Higdon went on to chair the Organ and Church Music Department at the University of Kansas, and to a successful worldwide concert and recording career.
Higdon's care and exactitude in setting registration produced marvelous coloristic variety. His precise rhythmic performance produced a truly memorable afternoon.
The two concert highlights were Prelude by French great Olivier Messiaen and Critical Mass for organ and electronic tape by American composer James Mobberley.
Messiaen had great renown as a Parisian organist for over 40 years. He taught at various schools in Paris, most notably at the Conservatory, and had many illustrious students.
Showing variety, shading
The charming Prelude, found in 1992 by Messiaen's wife shortly after his death, was probably composed in the 1930s. A soft introspective start develops gradually into a thunderous fortissimo, which stops suddenly. The ensuing music reprises the opening pensive mood. Higdon's performance had great dynamic variety and fine coloristic shading.
Mobberley's Critical Mass is named for the "smallest amount of fissionable material sufficient to sustain a chain reaction." Sampled sounds from the fine Cleveland Art Museum organ formed the basis for the short piece, which combined jazz-related rapid ostinato figures and fast repeated-note passage work. The interchange between the organ and the digitally-manipulated tape sounds was interesting. The brevity of the piece helped secure its effectiveness. Higdon's performance was excellent, consistently maintaining an exact relationship between organ and prerecorded tape.
Two engaging longer pieces, one by American Stephen Paulus and the other by Jean Alain, both had a three-movement plan, with the outer movements fast and lively, and the inner one meditative and dark.
Complexity
Alain's piece, the afternoon's most technically challenging, had elaborate presets enabling the organist to undertake complex registration changes rapidly during the performance by pressing a single button. Syncopated jazz-related material, first in the pedals, later in the manuals, and alternating with a sustained chordal texture, enlivens the first movement and returns at the end of the third.
The second movement, "a funeral dance to honor a heroic memory," prophesized the composer's own death as a war casualty. The slow sustained texture supports a dark oboe-like melody that was beautifully played by Higdon.
Paulus' piece was also challenging, but seemed to go on a bit too long, as did a set of variations by Jean Langlais.
Higdon also played two Bach pieces with great verve and accuracy, although the 20th-century music dominated the program.