In Monday’s (10/3) Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns writes, “The King of Instruments was lonely no more. Normally heard from its solitary perch on the second floor of Macy’s department store [in downtown Philadelphia], the legendary Wanamaker organ had a 100th-birthday celebration with full orchestra (not so unusual in recent years) and one positioned nearer than usual on the second-floor gallery for the first time in some nine decades. The Camden-based Symphony in C (in a reduced version) joined the organ for a concert of substantial but infrequently heard organ/orchestra works and did so with a particularly strong artistic imperative, even if the pieces were not all first-rate. … In typical symphonic concert halls, the organ is often used as a supporting character, creating sonic heft more felt than heard. At Macy’s, the tables were inevitably turned—Why else would you go to the trouble of turning a department store into a concert hall?—which means that the organ and its master, Peter Richard Conti, exercised periodic options to claim the foreground.”
Posted October 3, 2011
