And now, just more than a decade after he first appeared at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Carpenter is returning for the 51st HKAF for a programme of Bach's most powerful organ music and, over another two concerts, improvised soundtracks for two classics of silent cinema, The General (1926) and Metropolis (1927).
The highlight of the all-Bach programme at the"Carpenter Plays Bach" recital will see the organist tackling the German composer's Goldberg Variations, long regarded as one of the most challenging compositions for keyboard."I was drawn to it because it is serious and ambitious,"Carpenter says.
And when asked about the challenges of providing live, improvised soundtracks to silent movies, Carpenter says:"Silent movies are a good use of the organ. The movie tells you everything you need to know, and you improvise appropriately. Ideally the viewer will at some level forget that I am playing, at least some of the time."
At all three HKAF programmes, Carpenter will be performing on the magnificent pipe organ at the Cultural Centre Concert Hall, hand-made by the Austrian manufacturer Rieger. Since he unveiled his International Touring Organ in 2014, many of his international performances have utilised this breakthrough electronic keyboard, but Carpenter says that he always attempts to "bring out the best in any instrument I am invited to play".
His International Touring Organ, which took 10 years to build at a cost of US$1.4 million, uses digital samples from more than two dozen world-class organs. The traditional pipe organ is obviously not the most portable of instruments, but the more compact electronic organ allows Carpenter to tour worldwide to venues that have never had an organ.
