Art Students’ League – 215 W. 57th St., Manhattan; The Church of the Transfiguration (The Little Church Around the Corner) – 1 E. 29th St., Manhattan; New York Print Center – 535 W. 24th St., Manhattan; Webster Hall @ Grand Central Terminal, Manhattan
My first stop was the American Fine Arts Society building on
W. 57th Street. I barely made it in time for the 11:00am tour (thank you, MTA)
(ß that was sarcasm).
The building dates from 1892, and the AFAS initials were on a stained glass
window and the mosaic tile floor on the first floor level. Our knowledgeable
tour guide (also a student at the Art Students’ League) challenged us to find
another AFAS rendition in the main foyer. We failed. AFAS was on every doorknob
in the foyer. The things you learn on an OHNY tour! We saw an actual painting
studio with artists/students at work, a sculpting studio (sans the life model),
and various other locations. Well worth the trip. Oh did I mention that OHNY is
free?
My second (and third, more on that later) stop was the
Little Church Around the Corner. This is a space I have been in before, since it
was used this past spring as a venue for Gotham Early Music Scene’s Midday
Concerts that I attended with some regularity. OHNY offered an organ recital
and a guided tour (at two different times, hence the second and third stop).
The organ was installed in the church in the 1980s, though the church dates
back at least a hundred years before that. The organ was made by the C.B. Fisk
company and was made by hand in Massachusetts, disassembled and then
reassembled on site in NYC. It is a mechanical organ, meaning that a lot of the
work (not the bellows) is done by hand. The organist, in this case Claudia
Dumschat, needs to pull individual stops as the registration for each of the
three keyboards for each individual piece.
The program: Purcell: Trumpet Tune; J.S. Bach: Aria,
transcribed by Virgil Fox; Handel: From Water Music; J.S. Bach: St. Anne Fugue;
and Widor: Toccata from Symphony V. You’ve probably heard the Purcell at a
wedding or three. It’s brash and fun. The first Bach had a softer sound (string
stops from the organ) with the theme set off as a solo line in the second
iteration, followed by a much fuller section (to be expected from a V. Fox
transcription), though the piece never lost its contemplative nature. The
Handel was gentle, and featured the oboe as a solo stop. The organ really can be
a one-person symphony orchestra. The Bach fugue was quite majestic at the
outset, and it was pretty easy to hear the main tune (O God, Our Help in Ages
Past) jumping in and out. The Widor was bright, brisk, and loud! I saw two young
girls literally sit up quickly and glance at each other as the piece began.
I should have liked the Print Center exhibit better than I
did. It dealt with printed versions of the way sound made the artists react.
Some were OK by me; some were a bit too abstract for me.
Webster Hall was a large installation with a lot of text
about the history of urban planning in NYC. Too much text for me to wade
through at the end of a fairly long day.
I have three stops planned for OHNY tomorrow, weather
permitting. Wish me luck!
p.s. I volunteered this year, though I was on call on Friday, and never got
called. It still counts as a year of volunteering, though.
ConcertMeister
Good stuff, UVA!
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