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Stambaugh Auditorium Organ Series: catching up with Christopher Houlihan

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by Daniel Hathaway

Houlihan-Christopher-by-SteinerNew York-based organist Christopher Houlihan returns to the restored E.M. Skinner organ at Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium on Sunday, April 23 at 4:00 pm for a program of music by Louis Vierne, Olivier Messiaen, J.S. Bach, and César Franck.

Houlihan is well-known in Northeast Ohio, having played Bach, Franck, and Vierne at Stambaugh in November 2012, Vierne and Liszt at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights in April 2013, and most recently, Bach, Franck, and Vierne at Christ Presbyterian Church in Canton on March 19 of this year.

That repertoire list gives a big hint about Houlihan’s musical tastes, which run heavily toward French Romantic music, a national tradition the organist imbibed first-hand during a year he spent in Paris serving as assistant organist at the American Cathedral. [Read more…]

CD Review: Christopher Houlihan plays Bach

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by Daniel Hathaway

Houlihan-Bach-CD-CoverOrganist Christopher Houlihan’s two previous recordings were devoted to music by Maurice Duruflé, Jehan Alain and Louis Vierne — three go-to composers for demonstrating the talents of a young organ virtuoso. His most recent release on Cleveland’s Azica label takes on more dangerous interpretive material: some of the more monumental works of Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as Houlihan’s own arrangement of Bach’s Concerto in the Italian Style. [Read more…]

Review: Organist Christopher Houlihan in symphonic works by Vierne and Liszt at Fairmount Presbyterian (April 19)

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by Timothy Robson

Houlihan-ChristopherChristopher Houlihan, a rising star in the classical organ world, made his second Northeast Ohio appearance on Friday, April 19, at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights (he played last November at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown). The concert was jointly sponsored by Fairmount and the Cleveland Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. His program contained just two works, the Symphony No. 3 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 28, by Louis Vierne, and Franz Liszt’s monumental Fantasy and Fugue on “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam.” It was a heavy-weight program that required all of the ingenuity of the performer and all the resources of the church’s large Schantz pipe organ.

Louis Vierne, born nearly blind in 1870, studied organ at the Paris Conservatory, then served as assistant to his teacher Charles-Marie Widor at Saint-Sulpice. He became the organist at Notre Dame Cathedral in 1900, a post he held until his death in 1937. [Read more…]

Preview: Organists Bálint Karosi and Christopher Houlihan both come to town on April 19, but no need to choose

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by Daniel Hathaway

Karosi-Houlihan

When it rains, it pours, and in April that’s a good thing. Two stellar concert organists are set to play very different recitals in Cleveland on Friday, April 19, and happily, fans of organ music can catch both of them. 34-year-old Hungarian-born Bálint Karosi opens the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival at 4 pm at Berea United Methodist Church with music by J.S. Bach’s predecessors and the master himself, and 25-year-old Christopher Houlihan performs Vierne and Liszt at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights at 7:30 in a recital jointly sponsored by Fairmount Church and the Cleveland Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

How different can two organists and two recitals be? With centuries of repertory to explore, “a longer history than any other instrument,” Houlihan reminds us in a phone call from his home in New York, there can be plenty of differences. The instruments, for one thing. Karosi will play a baroque-style tracker instrument built by Rudolf Janke in Germany in 1974, while Houlihan will perform on the eclectic, 100-rank electro-pneumatic instrument built by Ohio’s Schantz Co. in 1966 (incorporating elements of an earlier Holtkamp organ). For another thing, the two players come from different backgrounds and were inspired by very different influences. [Read more…]

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