Virgil Fox - Music

Music

Always Fox stressed pushing the limits of the instruments available to him, rather than requiring that they, or his playing, be authentic to the era of the music. His style (particularly his taste for fast tempos, flashy registrations, and a willingness to indulge in sentimentality) was in contrast to that of his contemporaries, such as E. Power Biggs.

Fox was also famous for his musical memory, and could instantly recall over 250 concert works, playing at double speed or faster in rehearsals (which usually went late into the night). He did not read from written scores at his organ concerts, even when playing alongside an orchestra.

Many organists, however, have strongly criticized Fox for his unconventional interpretations of classical organ music. On his album "Heavy Organ: Bach Live at Winterland," Fox defended his approach to Bach and organ music in general, in the introduction to the ubiquitous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, by Johann Sebastian Bach:

There is current in our land (and several European countries) at this moment a kind of nitpicking worship of historic impotence. They say that Bach must not be interpreted and that he must have no emotion, that his notes speak for themselves. You want to know what that is? Pure unadulterated rot! Bach has the red blood. He has the communion with the people. He has all of this amazing spirit. And imagine that you could put all the music on one side of the agenda with his great interpretation and great feeling and put the greatest man of all right up on top of a dusty shelf underneath some glass case in a museum and say that he must not be interpreted! They're full of you-know-what and they're so untalented that they have to hide behind this thing because they couldn't get in the house of music any other way!

For once making a similar speech at one of his recitals, music critic Alan Rich called him "the Liberace of the organ loft", and severely took him to task in New York Magazine.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his controversial approach to organ music, Virgil Fox attained a celebrity status not unlike that of Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould. The New York Times said of him, 20 years after his death, "Fox could play the pipe organ like nobody's business, but that is not all that made him unforgettable to so many people across the country. He made classical organ music appeal even to audiences that normally wouldn't be expected to sit still for it."

In a sign of continued recognition unusual for a performer (as distinct from a composer), Virgil Fox memorial recitals and concerts continue to be staged, more than a quarter-century after his death.