Karen Christianson may be one of the most talented teenage organists in the United States, but that doesn’t mean she is going to become a professional musician. Depending on how things go during her first year at Harvard University this fall, the 17-year-old’s upcoming concert visit to Toronto could be her last.
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Christianson is bringing a textbook virtuoso recital programme to Metropolitan United Church next Friday, featuring the great French masters César Franck, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne and Jean Langlais alongside J.S. Bach and contemporary American composers Ad Wammes and Carson Cooman.
This isn’t her first Toronto visit; she played at Metropolitan United four years ago.
But she has had other significant firsts this year: In February, she was the first woman to play the organ at Eton, the fabled boys’ school down the hill from Windsor Castle, and she was the youngest person to perform an organ recital at Westminster Abbey.
Christianson played Widor’s great Organ Symphony No. 6 at both places — and will be doing so again in Toronto.
The young organist was understandably elated to be not just visiting but playing at Westminster Abbey. “I was excited and honoured, but not nervous,” she says. Her favourite memory of that visit is from when the building closed to the public, the lights were turned off, and she was left alone in the cavernous, shadowy interior.
“It was just me and my dad in the Abbey. I thought of all the kings and queens who had been crowned here. I thought of Will and Kate walking down the aisle. And here I was, surrounded by all this history and I had the place to myself,” she recalls.
The Eton visit was less awe-inducing — and Christianson admits finding enough practice time was challenging. “They have something like 43 organ students there, so someone is always using the organ for lessons,” she says.
There are no two pipe organs — or spaces in which they sit — that are the same, so an organist needs to tailor their interpretations to both what the instrument and the acoustics can accomplish.
The Philadelphian says she likes to get about four hours of preparation time per half-hour of recital. It gives her time to listen to each stop, decide which combinations of stops she’ll be using (which is called registration), and then run through the music a couple of times.
Christianson’s Dad is her official page-turner as well as extra pair of ears. “He’ll walk around the building listening to me and then let me know how it sounds,” she says.
The most difficult acoustic she has ever encountered was at Ely cathedral, just north of Cambridge, in England. The organist sits on one side of the organ, which is up in an arched loft that divides the interior into two spaces (the nave and the quire). The pipes speak out on the other side of the instrument, so, for the organist, it sounds as if it’s someone else playing in another room — one with a lot of reverberation.
“It was really hard for me to hear what was going on,” Christianson recalls. “Fortunately, they had this system where you could put on headphones so you could hear what [the organ] sounds like in the nave.” For the actual performance, she had to rely on what she remembered hearing during her practice time.
Christianson has a handful of concert dates left this summer, which she is taking off to enjoy the last of her freedom before leaving her parents’ side for the first time and heading off to university in September.
She also has to finish composing a set of organ variations on her school song, which she is supposed to premiere at the graduation.
Although she has had a fine organ teacher in Alan Morrison at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute since she was 8, and he encouraged her to remain at the school for full-time music studies, Christianson is off to Harvard so she can study sciences.
I ask if it’s because she looking for a more materially stable future. She replies that’s not the case at all; that she simply wants to pursue her other interests before making a career commitment.
“As long as you’re passionate about what you’re doing you’ll make ends meet,” she declares with the same certainty she brings to her organ playing.
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You can find all the details of her Toronto concert programme here.
Here is Christianson playing the Finale movement from Widor’s Sixth at Gloucester Cathedral last summer, followed by some MarcelDupré at the Wanamaker (now Macy’s) department store organ in Philadelphia:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
