RCCO Masterclass with William Porter

Since it was March Break, I had my entire Saturday free. My orchestra just had our concert and so we have a couple Saturdays off. 

I was able to go to William Porter's Masterclass hosted by the RCCO (the Royal Canadian College of Organists) on March 10 at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church at King & Simcoe. 

It was my first time watching a Masterclass and it's quite different from a regular class as there is an audience. William Porter is a world-renowned performer and he is well known for his improvisations.

The participants in this Masterclass were, Manuel Piazza, Stefani Bedin, Zoe Lei and Martin Jongsma.

I got to the Masterclass early, so I was able to sit up front.

First we heard Manuel Piazza play the Bach Prelude in B Minor, BWV 544. Manuel is the Organ Scholar at St. James' Cathedral and Manuel played for the choir that I sang with in Chichester & Winchester in the UK over the New Year hoilday.

William Porter taught Manuel to slowly release the keys for certain chords so that it would be a more gentle release.  He also had some feedback about the text. He commented that on the original manuscripts from the earlier years Bach was less strict about notation, but later on, he became more precise. Sometimes publishers or editors may have added things. William Porter noted that you need to understand the piece instead of entirely relying on the notation.

Next we heard Stefani Bedin play Bach's Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV 676.

(I believe Stefani's teacher is Kevin Komisaruk. Kevin played clavichord for my Grandma at her hospital bedside just a few days before she passed away. She was really comforted by his playing.)

William suggested that Stefani use some alternate fingering that would make it less tiring to play. He also had some feedback about the text and the consistency of certain elements like trills at choral entries.


We then heard Zoe Lei play Bach's Prelude in E flat Major.

William Porter asked her to focus on the rhythm of the piece. He also looked at the meaning of the phrase, "Pro organo pleno" and how it has changed over the years regarding registration. In Bach's time, it meant principals, mixtures and pedal reeds and then later on it evolved to include the manual reeds. She only needed to make a very simple change by adding the mixtures (stops with multiple ranks of high pitched pipes.)


The last organist we heard was Martin Jongsma. He was improvising a fugue and William Porter gave him feedback on how to improvise a fugue in the German Baroque style.
This was the most interesting part for me as improvisation is totally new to me. For the fugue, he suggested to keeping to 3rds and 6ths for the counter subject, and he also said that you shouldn't start a new voice from the same note but they shouldn't be too far apart from each other. I tried this when I got home, and it's so cool.

Thanks to the RCCO, William Porter and to all of the organists who played!
It was a great morning out!