To celebrate Bach’s birthday in March, Trinity Lutheran Church’s “Artists at the Organ” series presents the Hungaria-born virtuoso Balint Karosi.
The Bach program will be performed on the church’s Pasi organ. Tracker pipe organs such as the Martin Pasi at Trinity are particularly well-suited for the works of Bach.
The church has, in recent years, featured the music of this composer in March, the month of his birth-anniversary, which is March 21, 1685, said Norma Aamodt-Nelson, the church’s minister of music.
Karosi has selected from Bach’s vast repertoire to include a variety of styles. The opening prelude and fugue are known as among several pairs that Bach composed during his most productive period as a composer. Also, this pair might have been similar to pieces used by Bach to test newly built organs, Aamodt-Nelson said.
Bach also was known to integrate foreign styles into his organ works and was influenced by other well-known composers, such as Georg Boehm and Dieterich Buxtehude. Bach was fascinated by the work of Antonio Vivaldi, and transcribed his concertos for organ, Aamodt-Nelson said.
In Karosi’s program, he has selected such works as a D-minor concerto for organ — after Vivaldi — and two other works “after” composers.
On the program are the following Bach pieces: Prelude and Fugue in G Major; Trio in C Minor after Johann Friedrich Fasch; Trio in C Minor; Concerto in D Minor after Vivaldi; Trio in G Major; Aria in F Major after Couperin; Improvisation on submitted themes; and Concerto in G Major after Johann Ernst.
Karosi is known for his organ improvisations and will include one in this program, Aamodt-Nelson said.
Karosi grew up in a musical family in Budapest and began his musical career playing the piano and clarinet. He studied organ and clarinet at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and at the Conservatoire de Geneve.
Active as a concert organist and church musician, Karosi won the 2008 International J.S. Bach Competition in Leipzig, Germany, and the Improvisation Competition of the University of Michigan in 2012. He serves as director of music at First Lutheran Church in Boston.
This will be his first concert in the Seattle area.
Trinity’s “Artists at the Organ” will begin at 7 p.m. Sunday at Trinity Lutheran Church, 6215 196th St. SW, Lynnwood.
Suggested donation is $15. Seniors and students pay what they can. For more information go to www.trinitylutheranchurch.com.
Herald staff
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