All my focus this week is on St. Mark’s Choir concert this Friday, October 4 at 7 pm. Here’s how the concert was described in the weekly church newsletter:

Friday, October 4

On Friday, October 4 at 7:00 pm, a concert will be presented by the St. Mark’s Choir alongside organist Kathy Crosier. Music performed will be both sacred and secular, including everything from renaissance anthems to folk songs and movie soundtracks. All are invited to come and enjoy. A freewill offering will be taken to support the music program.

So this week, I’m focusing on my two organ pieces:

1-Hans Zimmer’s Cornfield Chase from the movie, Interstellar, arranged by Anna Lapwood
2-Marcel Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor, opus 7, no. 3

I was first introduced to the Interstellar music by a friend in my online Spanish class, who sent me this video about two years ago. At the time, I listened to it, but that was it. I didn’t try to find the score or anything, but somehow I must have filed it away in my brain for future retrieval.

When choir director Mike Dupré asked me to play a couple of pieces for this concert, saying they didn’t necessarily have to be church music, I suddenly thought of this piece. You might be aware that Interstellar is a major motion picture which uses the pipe organ for its soundtrack.

This past summer, I was thrilled to learn that Roger Sayer, the organist on the original soundtrack, was giving a concert at the Three Choirs Festival which I attended. Go back and read my post, “Other worldly Interstellar,” in which I quoted from the program:

In 2014 he received a phone call from Hans Zimmer that changed his life: an invitation to record the organ part for Interstellar. Roger has since performed live with Zimmer at the Royal Albert Hall and in 2023 at the O2 in the show Hans Zimmer LIVE to an audience of 40,000. ‘He is without doubt an extraordinary artist whose humanity shines in the impeccable artistry that flows from his hands.’ (Hans Zimmer)

The score to the film Interstellar is without doubt the most significant to incorporate a major role for the organ. It celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. For composer Hans Zimmer, writing for the organ had been something he’d always wanted to do, and Interstellar gave him the opportunity to fulfil his ambition. Given that he had use of ‘Hauptwerk’, where samples of famous organs can be used electronically, he initially intended that the organ part would not be played by a person but, in a last-minute change of heart, he decided to record it live. Temple Church was selected, where Roger Sayer was in post at the time.

I’m so glad to have found Anna Lapwood’s arrangement of this piece. According to Maddy Shaw Roberts, who wrote an article, “Church organ playing Hans Zimmer’s ‘Interstellar makes our world feel tiny,” Hans Zimmer’s music for Interstellar has the power to lift you up, fill your heart and make you feel like a tiny dot in this great universe.

I hope you enjoy it!

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The other piece, Marcel Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor, was assigned to me by my organ teacher when I was only a teenager. As I told the organists in the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists last week, for me it’s still a work in progress, almost six decades later!

And no wonder!

This week I read in Wikipedia that the piece was pronounced “unplayable” by none other than Charles-Marie Widor. You know, that Widor, of the famous “Widor Toccata.” Unbelievably there are four-note chords in the pedal, played by heel and toe of each foot, but … to me that’s not the most difficult part of the piece. It’s the torturous left hand part which goes like the dickens. Here is a version played by Yves Castagnet on the organ of Notre-Dame de Paris, in which you can watch the score as it’s being played.

This is actually a piece I studied with Dupré himself and what I remember most is that he gave me permission to rewrite the wide chords in the right hand. That is because at that point in his life, his hands were severely gnarled with rheumatoid arthritis and he couldn’t even reach an octave! So sad … but it was good for me, because then I was able to play the piece with somewhat more ease.

Spoiler alert: I’m not going to take it so fast, because for me playing the right notes is more important than sheer speed. There are videos on YouTube that are under seven minutes for this piece, but the fastest of all is Dupré himself.

Here are some pictures I took of our dress rehearsal last Saturday:

Please come! Parking is available in the lot behind the church and across the street.