Carlo Curley, who has died aged 59, was the self-styled “Pavarotti of the organ” – an entertaining figure with a phenomenal keyboard technique whose oversized personality drew large crowds. He was well known in Ireland through his frequent recitals.
The Daily Telgraph carried the following obituary:
Like Pavarotti, Curley was an enormous bear of a man, standing 6ft tall and almost as wide, wearing a floppy, multicoloured tie and beaming behind his beard. He also shared with the tenor an irrepressible degree of showmanship; he could work a crowd into frenzy – dancing in the aisles and weeping in the pews were reported at some concerts – by blasting away with the fortissimo range of his powerful instrument.
“Bach invented rock ’n roll,” he would insist, adding that a work by Handel was a “real toe-tapper”. A typical Curley programme, whether in the concert hall or the cathedral, was as likely to include the theme to Monty Python’s Flying Circus as it was the classics. Such kitsch would have purists sneering about his lack of taste, but Curley was unabashed, instructing his audience to fasten their seat belts before pulling out all the stops to ensure that they got their money’s worth.
In a profession known for its relative anonymity, Curley cut a brash, ebullient and outspoken figure, collecting almost as many musical enemies as friends, particularly in Britain. When the purists became too vociferous he would challenge them to a “battle of the organs”, in which he would pit his portable Allen instrument against the finest British cathedral consoles, a form of musical bloodsport in the nave.
Naturally his preference was for bringing the organist out of the organ loft and on to centre stage. When the keyboard itself could not be moved, he would insist on a camera and a video screen so that “the audience can all see me flying”, as he once told the journalist Mark Pappenheim.
Continnued at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9483336/Carlo-Curley.html