Tag: organ

Music by Karg-Elert, Marco Bossi, Guilmant, Liszt and John Bull

Paul Rosoman – organ

Cathedral of St Paul, Wellington

Friday 14 October, 12.45pm

The monthly organ series at the Anglican Cathedral might not get the sort of crowds one might have seen on the next two days in a big arena in Auckland, but for the few they are a valuable alternative, or perhaps an addition to the entertainments that otherwise dominate our world.

In all the quite frequent organ recitals that I get to around the city, I wonder at the profound change that has overcome the world in the past century, at the beginning of which communities had the will and could find the money to build generally rather beautiful buildings in which to celebrate their beliefs, and even more, to equip them with very expensive, technologically quite sophisticated musical instruments.

I am not an organist, but I have never been able to walk past a church where an organ is being played, and it is sad that today, one cannot even enter most churches freely, let alone stand and wait for the sound of an organ being played.

Paul Rosoman’s recital comes not long after his return from an interesting tour that took him to a small organ festival at Pelplin about 40km south of Gdansk in northern Poland. He also played in Germany and Britain.

He did not bring back any music from Poland but his programme was nevertheless very interesting: I had heard none of the music before.

It began with a highly diverting Homage to Handel, Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s Op 75. His name used to be more familiar – it was to me when my musical discoveries were starting in the 1950s – than it seems to be now, at least in New Zealand.

His piece is based on the same Handel theme – the Passacaglia from the Harpsichord Suite in G minor, HWV 432 – that was used by Johan Halvorsen in his Passacaglia for violin and viola that was played in a version for violin and cello, at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson last February, and in March by the violinist and violist of the Antipodes Trio at Paekakariki and in August by members of the Mêler Ensemble.

But the tune is distinctive and didn’t need background familiarity to enjoy it.

This time it provided the compoer with the basis for the most extraordinary, virtuosic exercise in kaleidoscopic registration changes and combinations. The programme note said there were 50 distinct combinations of stops – I didn’t count though – and that it was rarely played because most organs lacked the necessary range or technology. I couldn’t tell whether the, to me, brilliant scope of the cathedral organ filled the bill or whether Rosoman had to make compromises.

It is indeed the kind of piece that would captivate the neophyte as well as gain the admiration of the aficionado, particularly in the commanding performance given here.

Marco Enrico Bossi was a few years older than Karg-Elert and his Chant de soir was obviously designed to charm a fairly general audience; interestingly scored for some of the prettier stops, sentimental in an intelligent way, a touch elegiac.

Then came a more substantial piece by Guilmant who, you will remember, was RNZ Concert’s ‘Composer of the Week’ a while back. This was the Scherzo from his Fifth Organ Sonata, Op 80; it turned out to be a quietish scherzo in its pace and dynamics but its scherzoicity (neoglism acceptable?) emerged from the flamboyance of its melodic lines and bravura passage-work.

A short piece by Liszt followed – a charming set of variations on a choral setting of a pretty 16th century Ave Maria by one Jacob Arcadelt. If you look up Wikipedia, as I did, you will see a small reproduction of Caravaggio’s famous painting , The Lute Player, which is said to show the young woman (? – but you know about Caravaggio don’t you?) playing music by Arcadelt. The painting is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. It also shows very precise and interesting detail of the character of the lute and of a violin resting on a table, especially of the bow.

The music was not especially remarkable but provided a very nice link to the last piece – the entire recital was built on a reverse chronological sequence – by John Bull, a Rondo in G.

Bull (born a couple of years before Shakespeare)  left a large quantity of fine keyboard music and his position in English music in the Elizabethan-Jacobean period is very close to Byrd and Gibbons.  His life was eventful: in New Grove (and also in Wikipedia), interesting details of his life can be read. Wikipedia sums it up: “However, in addition to his virtuosity as a keyboard performer and composer, Bull was also skilled at getting into trouble.”

And a report written in 1615 by the Archbishop of Canterbury goes into a bit more detail: “the man hath more music than honesty and is as famous for marring of virginity as he is for fingering of organs and virginals.” – nice archiepiscopal double-entendre.

This Rondo struck me as an extraordinarily sophisticated piece of writing, though its very un-Renaissance sound and complexity would have resulted from performance on this organ. But I assume it is a modern arrangement, for its treatment is virtuosic, elaborate and opulent , seeming to relish its access to the organ’s power and tonal variety. It sounded great fun, and the long pause before the coda sounded far more 19th than 16th century. And Rosoman’s performance did it complete justice.

I could not identify the actual piece in New Grove, let alone Wikipedia.

This was a highly entertaining recital; such a pity that there weren’t a thousand organ-sceptics there ready for conversion.

L’Orgue Symphonique : French organ music in the symphonic tradition

Guilmant: Grand Chorus in G minor, Op 84; Widor: Symphonie Gothique, Op 70; Jehan Alain: Le jardin suspendu and Litanies from Three Pieces.

Michael Stewart at the organ

Church of St Mary of the Angels

Sunday 25 September, 2.30pm

I hadn’t adjusted my watch and as a result, missed the first item in the recital: Guilmant’s Grand choeur en forme de marche pour grand orgue, in G minor. Two of the three composers in the programme had been honoured as Radio New Zealand Concert’s Composers of the Week which had been introduced by Stewart himself (Guilmant died in 1911 and Alain was born in that year. Alain’s father had been a pupil of Guilmant’s). So this was a sad mishap, as my knowledge of Guilmant has been confined to several of the works played during the week plus a few pieces in the organ compilations in my CD collection.

However, I was in time fully to enjoy Widor’s Gothic Symphony (his No 9), one of his most successful works. It sometimes seems hard to fit the school of French organ composers into the pattern of other French composers, of opera, orchestral, chamber and choral music: Franck was really the only one to straddle both fields, though several well-known composers like Saint-Saëns and Fauré were fine organists.

Widor, born in 1844, was nine years younger that Saint-Saëns, two years younger than Massenet and a year older than Fauré. Though he lived till 1937, his composing life virtually ended around 1900. This symphony was composed about 1894, as Strauss was writing tone poems, Verdi’s Falstaff had just been produced, Mahler was working on his third symphony, Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un faune, Brahms’s last piano pieces and the two clarinet sonatas; Tchaikovsky had just written the Pathétique and had died.

Widor produced a large-scale work in this symphony (almost 30 minutes; actually, others would have called it a sonata, being for one instrument: Widor was obviously wanting to suggest the scale and variety of sounds available on a great organ). In the first movement, Moderato, over plunging, rotating pedal notes, the manuals mark out an insistent, almost hypnotic pattern, that could hardly be called a melody; yet it is arresting, slowly rising in pitch and seems to gather more and more stops into its dense and turbulent textures. I’m sure this was my first live hearing; it impressed me greatly, confirming my belief that the essence and force of most music is really grasped only in live performance. Though Stewart’s registrations, as offered by this fine French-style organ that Maxwell Fernie left to us, had great clarity and never overwhelmed through sheer volume, the music’s impact was stunning in a near literal sense.

The slow movement, Andante sostenuto, is one of Widor’s loveliest pieces and its calm, coloured by carefully selected flute stops, was an affecting contrast.

The third movement, a dancing fugue on the plainchant ‘Puer natus est nobis’, is far from the usual sombre character of organ music in a liturgical setting, with its dotted rhythms, though a splendid pedal appearance of the tune, in full diapason vestments, brings it to an fine declamatory end. The last movement, variations on the same tune, seems like a sequence of distinct moments musicaux, so individual are their various appearances, some in rather entertaining fugal form. Stewart held them together through his adroit handling of vivid, contrasted stops.

Jehan Alain, born in 1911, was 15 years older than his famous organist sister, Marie-Claire Alain; he was killed in the first year of World War II, in a heroic confrontation which the Germans themselves later honoured.

These two pieces proved a fine introduction to his work. The hanging garden was obviously an impressionistic piece, which would have been hard to ascribe to any particular orchestral composer who wrote music that carries that label. It was delicate and translucent, inviting the organist to explore an entrancing range of flute stops in high registers.

Litanies then came as a surprising, emphatic irruption, with its insistent theme of striking clarity and its comparably striking handling, evolving, investing with rhythmic energy. Its religious context comes as a surprise: Alain said that ‘in the obsessive rhythm of the work [was] released the irresistible gusting wind of prayer’ (perhaps a not very idiomatic translation of the French which I do not have to hand). All one could say was that Alain’s religion was of a powerful, muscular kind; and the music offered here through Stewart’s impressive medium would surely have caused the sadly small audience to go in search of more.

Organ Week (Wellington Organists’ Association)

Dianne Halliday, Director of Music at St Peter’s

Chorale for a New Organ, and Adagio for Strings (Barber); Partita on ‘Christus der ist mein Leben’ (Pachelbel); Prelude and fugue in A, BWV 536 (Bach0; ‘Salve regina’ – 2004 (Naji Hakim). Organ music inspired by the progressive Jewish sect: by William Buck, Hugo Chaim Adler, Ludwig Altman and Michael Horvit

St Peter’s church, Willis Street

Thursday 8 September, 12.45pm

While, nationally, we have an Organ Month, in Wellington only an Organ Week has been organized. The effort required to present a month of recitals, almost every day, is very considerable, and can really be
justified only if the response by audiences is encouraging. Judging by the smallish audience at this most interesting lunchtime concert, the decision to confine it to one week is understandable. Yet when free Sunday afternoon concerts were given a couple of years ago on the Town Hall organ, the crowds were impressive. Where were all those organ lovers?

And incidentally, where have been the organ recitals on the Town Hall organ this year, once again. Is this the ‘Positively Wellington’ Convention Centre’s contribution in support of the city’s claim to be the cultural capital? Well done!

St Peter’s has got a lot of attractive features. It’s one of Wellington’s prettiest churches, in graceful and restrained gothic, with its nearly full suite of stained glass windows and the delicately sculpted wooden screen marking the division between nave and sanctuary; and the newly restored organ, its visible pipes as beautifully decorated as any in the country.

Anyone expecting an exhibition of the sort we heard from Cameron Carpenter playing an ultra flamboyant (‘vulgar’ to use Carpenter’s own word) organ toccata by Samuel Barber with the National Youth Orchestra last Friday would have been relieved at the classical restraint and modesty of this Barber piece. This Lutheran-style chorale was treated with the sort of respect that a Stanford or Parry might have offered, only occasionally coloured with modal harmonies. Dianne Halliday’s use of the organ’s resources was guided by good taste, an ear for an uncluttered range of stops.

Barber’s Adagio was similarly refined, but here, even though the organ theoretically offers a wider palette of colours than, say, a piano or string quartet, I felt that the piece did not really sustain itself and, surprisingly, seemed to need to end a couple of minutes before it did.

The Pachelbel Partita employed, again, a traditional German chorale, putting it through a conventional, and predicatable, series of variations that maintained the attention for just long enough, through the choice of a charming variety of stops. Bach’s BWV 536 came from a similar basket, though built on rather more elaborate lines, the A major character reflected in a lot of high-lying writing that conveyed an untroubled piety.

The last piece deriving from the Christian organ tradition was by eminent Franco-Lebanese composer Naji Hakim, who succeeded Messiaen at the church of the Sainte-Trinité in Paris and is current titular at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris: a ‘Salve Regina’ composed in 2004. The melodic lines of this were, like the Bach, set in generally high registers, using unusual high piccolo stops. It was attractive though becoming repetitive melodically and in its tone.

The last four pieces drew on an unusual repertoire – that of the progressive or reform Jewish tradition which the organist explained as having originated in Germany where organs became familiar in liturgical roles and subsequently in the United States.

The first of them was ‘Candle-lighting’ by English-born, New Zealand composer William Buck, who spent 14 years at the Jewish Centre in Venice, Florida. It did not suggest a strongly sacred character, expressing a
benign, meandering spirit which the organist exploited attractively.

Then came two settings of a Jewish melody: ‘Avienu Malkenu’, both by European Jews who went to the United States. Neither sounded markedly Jewish, though that probably reflects my own imperfect knowledge of much Jewish music. The second, by Ludwig Altman, was accompanied by the distinct whirring of a motor which seemed to reveal itself as driving the tremolo stop that gave the piece a somewhat blowsy quality.

The last piece offered an altogether different insight into an aspect of Jewish culture – the ability to mock or satirise their own tradition. After a sententious opening which soon subsided to a gentle tuneful phase, came an amusing shift to a Broadway-style, syncopated, synthetic, Fiddler on the Roof style Jewish, perhaps we should say Yiddish, music arrived to lighten the spirit, in a fine irreverent way.

It was a particularly well-constructed programme, admirably played.

Great Music 2011:  Music by William Mathias, Britten, MacMillan, Lennox
Berkeley, Kenneth Leighton and Howells

Richard Apperley (organ)

Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 15 July, 12.45pm

A programme of entirely British organ music comes as a bit of a surprise for it is normal to think of the repertoire as dominated by Germany and France.

The second surprise was how attractive and interesting the recital was, especially as it was entirely from the 20th century (though coming from one with no special familiarity with a great deal of British organ music of earlier periods, I suppose that might be a provocative remark).

That was due as much to the organist Richard Apperley who is assistant organist at the cathedral and whose familiarity with and command of this organ must be near unparalleled.

William Mathias’s Processional had already begun when I arrived and I was sorry not to hear it all; it was enlivened by the use of bright, sparkling stops, some with a tight reed quality; the impact was fresh, inoffensively diatonic, non-portentous, welcoming, speaking of a lively musical mind that was concerned to arrest and entertain the listener, and the last few bars did that with its surprising shift of tone. The skill and buoyancy of Apperley’s playing persuaded my organ-diffident companion that he should stay the course.

I’m not familiar with Britten’s organ music at all; yet, as with almost everything that composer wrote, this impressed. However, my unfamiliarity felt forgiven after I’d searched in the usual places to find out about this piece. An article in the Musical Times in 2004 remarks that Britten’s only organ piece known till recently was the Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria, which Apperley played later. But then in 2003 three pieces were discovered, two of them incidental music for a 1938 play by Max Catto called They Walk Alone which ran for six months in the West End and later on Broadway. Britten had taken the score with him to New York in 1939 and left it there when he and Pears returned to Britain in 1942. It and other organ pieces were presumably left in the hands of Elizabeth Mayer, the German émigré in New York who maintained an artistic salon for émigré writers and with whom Britten and Pears stayed. Her collection was given after the war to the Britten-Pears Library at Aldeburgh, and evidently not thoroughly examined. The author of the Musical Times article, Timothy Bond, prompted the search for it and helped get the pieces published.

The Prelude to They walk alone had a sombre character, meditative and somehow comforting though without the slightest hint of self-reflection. The opening and closing of the swell box seemed to lend it a feeling of humanity, of breathing, or of rising and falling level of attention. The organist managed to suggest that he was playing a piece written by a real organist who knew how to draw idiomatic and intriguing sounds from the instrument; just as Apperley did.

The second piece by Britten, Prelude and Fugue on theme of Vittoria (Victoria in English, the theme from the motet Ecce Sacerdos Magnus) was rather more robust, at least in the Prelude which was a vigorous call to attention after which the fugue began quietly and became, not only more and more complex, as fugues do, but more and more extrovert and arresting, and complex. I have to confess to an obscure feeling of dislike for Britten in an abstract sense, on account of the person perhaps, but invariably, once the music starts, I am fascinated, drawn in, and it was the case here.

I’m not aware that Britten was anything of an organist, though a brilliant pianist, but this piece suggested an ear keenly attuned to the organ’s capacities, sensitively exploited by the player here.

There were also two pieces from Scottish composer James MacMillan: again, I had not encountered him as an organ composer. The first piece was entitled White Note Paraphrase. My ears did not allow me to believe that the piece was confined to playing the white notes. A remotely suggested, uneasy Scottish motif existed in an entirely different sphere from the accompanying series of single notes from an attenuated stop. As with all MacMillan’s music, there was a strong feeling of individuality and musical sense-of-purpose MacMillan’s second piece was Gaudeamus in loci pace, which again made use of two very distinct lines of thought and sound; a murmuring bass line below a sequence of rising silvery notes which at the end simply descended into silence. Both pieces prompted me to explore this area of a composer whose political attitudes I am responsive to.

Hyperion’s website tells me that Gaudeamus was written in 1998 to celebrate the golden jubilee of the re-foundation of a Benedictine Abbey in the diocese of Aberdeen; that it’s based on a plainchant melody sung as the introit on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Lennox Berkeley was ten years older than Britten (incidentally, he was William Mathias’s teacher at the Royal Academy of Music). His Aria is one of three pieces for organ of 1966-68, entirely approachable, quietly lyrical, with what’s been described as a ‘bitter-sweet tunefulness’.

The least familiar name to me was Kenneth Leighton’s; raised in Yorkshire, he spent most of his life teaching in Edinburgh. His Paean was not of a particularly strident or clamorous kind, opening with bright tone clusters (in an attractive vein) it seemed to be designed in some complexity, for a great cathedral lit with gorgeous, kaleidoscopic stained glass. It struck me as a particularly interesting piece, individual in character and of genuine musical inspiration that this performance did full justice to.

The recital ended with the oldest music, the First Rhapsody by Herbert Howells in 1915, opening with a chorale-like theme in a slow crescendo, hinting at the presence of a grand melody which failed to materialise, eventually being somewhat smothered in dense harmonies, perhaps suggesting the impact of the First World War on the composer . But things clarify and lighten and the work ends in a calm, meditative mood, rather beautifully, and an awareness of the circumstances of its composition seemed, in hindsight, to give it more meaning.

So this was a recital that introduced me to an area of music with which I was largely unfamiliar but which held my attention and at many stages delighted me; I’m sure that a great deal of that impact was on account of the skill and musical taste of Richard Apperley.

L’Orgue symphonique: French organ music in the symphonic tradition

César Franck: Pièce symphonique, Lento and Sortie from ‘L’organiste’; Chorale No 2 in B minor; Pastorale from ‘Six pièces’; Cantabile and Pièce héroique from ‘Trois pièces’

Douglas Mews at the organ of the
Church of Saint Mary of the Angels

Sunday 3 July, 2.30pm

In a celebration of the legacy of the church’s great organist Maxwell Fernie, Saint Mary’s is presenting three recitals by three organists of French symphonic organ music. This was the first, devoted to the founder of a tradition that set a new path for organ music which continues to
the present day.

It arose through the arrival of a composer whose instincts led him away from the emphasis on opera in the France of the early 19th century, to the rediscovery of the choral music of the Renaissance and Bach and of the German symphonic tradition.

The other contributor to the blossoming of organ music and its performance from around 1850 was the advent of the great organ builder Cavaillé-Coll: Franck was appointed principal organist at the Marais church of Saint-Jean-Saint-François in 1853 where Cavaillé-Coll’s new organ astonished and delighted him. That church is now the Cathédrale-Sainte-Croix-des-Armeniens, and its website records that it houses two organs by Cavaillé-Coll, one of them built in 1844 – certainly the one that Franck played. I have heard chamber music and vocal concerts there but have not heard the organ. 

The programme notes say that he earlier encountered a Cavaillé-Coll organ in the church of Notre Dame de Lorette; that was certainly his first organist post, but it is not clear that the church had a Cavaillé-Coll organ; that church’s website makes no mention of one. In 1858 he became principal organist at the new church of Sainte-Clotilde with its magnificent Cavaillé-Coll instrument and remained there the rest of his life. 

The recital began with three early pieces from a large collection, L’organiste. Pièce symphonique, was an extrovert piece in very four-square military tempo in its outer parts  in which Mews used
suitably brash stops, contrasted with a gentle middle section. The Lento movement and the Sortie were offered no more than hints of the great organ works that were to follow, though Mews’s imaginative registrations made the most of them.

The second of the three Chorales written in his last year was the most important work of the recital. The chorales do not enjoy the strong melodic character of some of his music, and their success depends greatly on the colours that the organist can create from the combinations of stops that he can contrive; Mews familiarity with Maxwell Fernie’s in-some-ways idiosyncratic masterpiece allowed him to move from one phase to the next, from the boisterous to the pastoral to the heroic, with dynamics and colourings that were always immaculate.

The Pastorale of almost 30 years earlier is one of the most familiar of his works – I think my LP including a performance by Jeanne Demessieux was one of the first organ discs I bought aged about 20: I am chastened by Mews’s reference to its being in an ‘easy-listening’ style. Nevertheless, it wears well, especially in such an affectionate, subtle performance.

The ‘Three Pieces’ were written for the inauguration in 1878 of the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Trocadero (across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, built ten years later). The Cantabile enjoys a vivid melody on loud reed stops that, like most of Franck’s tunes, ranges over a quite narrow compass. The last item was the Pièce héroique, played with splendid vitality and timbale colour, the raucous pedal stops perhaps a little indiscreet but perhaps intended mocking and undoubtedly arresting. 

As a totally inappropriate aside, it stuck me as odd that in Mews’s well-recorded, 2010  CD in Priory Record’s Great Australasian Organs series, he included no French music in a programme that in itself I find less than interesting, and which to me hardly displays the Wellington Town Hall Organ in the sort of important repertoire that does either player or organ proper justice.

Great Music 2011: Organ of St Paul’s Cathedral

Franck: Chorale No 1; Jongen: Chant de mai; Henri Mulet: Carillon-Sortie; Vivaldi (arr. Bach): Concerto in A minor, BWV593; Vierne: Carillon de Westminster

Michael Fulcher (organ)

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Friday 13 May 12.45pm

Michael Fulcher is moving on after seven years as Organist and Director of Music at the Anglican Cathedral. He is returning to Brisbane to take up the position of Organist at St John’s Cathedral, where he started as a choir boy.

Such an occasion might have called up a few war-horses like the Widor Toccata, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor or one of the Sorties by Lefébure-Wely. But the audience’s taste was flattered by less familiar, yet just as interesting music,

It opened with the first of Franck’s Chorales, one of the three that were his last compositions in the year of his death. Fulcher drew attention to the use of a new rank of stops in the Swell organ, the Vox humana, which he used for the second theme of the Choral, varied by opening and closing the Swell box. It was a gift of the National Carillonist, Timothy Hurd.

The performance was distinguished by his careful increasing of the richness of registrations, through what are basically variations on two related themes. Much of Franck’s organ music doesn’t reveal all its secrets at once, yet this performance more than suggested the rewards that come with familiarity.

Belgian composer Joseph Jongen was born in Liège, like Franck, and organ pieces form an interesting part of his output. His little piece¸ Chant de mai, was subtle in expression, and its performance maintained a clarity that allowed the later emergence of a romantic melody on the pedals to be enjoyed.

There was just one departure from the Franco-Belgian organ school: Bach’s arrangement of one of Vivaldi’s concertos for two violins, which became BWV 593. It was handled with a discretion proper to music of the period, on predominantly diapason stops, not too highly coloured, and Bach’s adaptation plus Fulcher’s comprehensive mastery of this organ offered all the evidence needed for its value in the Baroque repertoire.

Two carillons completed the programme. The first, Carillon-Sortie, by the somewhat obscure composer Henri Mulet, proved energetic, with many voices tending to tumble over each other in canon. It was a striking vehicle through which Fulcher’s virtuosity at the instrument could be heard without empty display. The last piece was the familiar Carillon de Westminster by Louis Vierne – based of course on the famous chimes. Its rather unvarying attachment to that theme hardly enhances its enjoyment by other than listeners of rudimentary experience in this kind of music in spite of its sophisticated harmonies and careful counterpoint. Nevertheless, it made for an arresting conclusion to this farewell recital.

In response to quite heart-felt applause from a largish audience, we had an encore in the form of a, for me, unknown piece by Jean Langlais (another blind organist) called Pasticcio from Ten Organ Pieces: almost comical sounds in dancing, dotted rhythms, that created towards the end, real or illusory echo effects. From what I have heard of Langlais in the past, I had not expected that he might have been given to such an overtly entertaining showpiece.

Michael Fulcher has made a major contribution to music in Wellington, both through his Cathedral activities, and as musical director of the Orpheus Choir, and he will be greatly missed. There is general interest in the selection of his successor.

Organ Concert: pieces by Buxtehude, John Stanley, J.S. Bach, Théodore Dubois, Jan Zwart, C.H.H. Parry, Nicolaus Bruhns, Noel Rawsthorne and C.V. Stanford

Paul Rosoman

St. Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Friday, 15 April, 7pm

It was a pleasant change to be at an organ recital that was well attended; perhaps opportunity to hear again the recently-restored St. Peter’s organ was part of the draw, and maybe the time was convenient to more people than that of many organ recitals. The music was well played, the programme interesting, and we were in the hands of a capable and experienced organist. The programme was sufficiently diverse to demonstrate much of the sound variety and capability of the instrument.

This organ, of three manuals and pedals, is beautiful to look on, with its decorated pipes, and good to hear. It suits the building admirably and has a magnificent range of ranks of pipes.

Buxtehude’s Praeludium in C is an intriguing piece of writing. Although the printed programme had excellent notes, those for this work, written by Professor Hans Davidsson, were perhaps a little abstruse in places. The work is known in English as ‘Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne’, and this title makes the structure a little clearer, though it is not the original title. However, it was good to have the titles of the episodes of Kühnau’s first Biblical Sonata printed; Buxtehude used the opening of that work to open the Praeludium. Kühnau’s sonata outlined the story of David and Goliath, and so it has been suggested that Buxtehude had this in mind. The nine titles, as used by Kühnau follow the course of this story, including the Israelites reaction to what is happening.

Buxtehude’s splendid writing was well exploited by the organist, with contrasting and varied registrations resulting in a dramatic performance.

Compared with Buxtehude and Bach, John Stanley’s writing is not very interesting, However, in his Organ Voluntary Op.5 no.1, the splendid reed pipes got a good work-out, and there was a brilliant final section on the flutes.

Bach’s Partita ‘O Gott, du Frommer Gott’ (in which title occurred one of a number of unfortunate misprints in the programme) is a set of variations on the chorale, the original hymn being by one Johann Heermann. It is thought to be a very early work of Bach’s. The opening statement of the chorael was a bold forte; the eight following variations illustrate musically the words of the hymn. The first variation contrasted the great and swell manuals very engagingly, while another employed the delicious flute pipes. The final variation began with a bright forte and featured diapasons and reeds, the music contrasting the two manuals.

While the printed programme gave the dates for some of the compositions, the dates for the composers were not given, which was a pity. With so many composers’ works being performed, it would have been interesting to compare the styles and settings from different periods.

After Bach, there was a great leap forward, to Théodore Dubois (1837-1924), whose Adoratio et Vox Angelica was played. A quiet opening on the swell manual presaged a mainly quiet but charming piece, with little use of the pedals. Both vox humana and tremulant were employed in this attractive music.

Another jump in time brought us to Dutch organ composer Jan Zwart. Thanks to an organist friend (he who introduced Paul Rosoman to Zwart’s music), I have discovered his dates were 1877 to 1937. His Een Vaste Burg is Onze God (the Dutch version of the well-known Lutheran hymn ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’) began as a very straightforward piece, employing bright sounds and fugal passages on the pedals throughout the delightful working out of the hymn melody; at other times the music was pungent. The melody was always apparent, though occasionally it needed a little more phrasing. The final variation on the tune was grand and brilliant. The friend described it aptly as in ‘a romantic style for the twentieth century’.

Elegy for 7^th April 1913 by Hubert Parry was thus named because it was written for the funeral of the 14^th Earl of Pembroke on that day. One would hardly have believed that Stravinsky had written Firebird three years earlier when listening to this slushy piece of Victoriana. As mentioned in the programme notes, Parry also wrote the famous Jerusalem, and the coronation anthem I was Glad, both of which have much more character than this little elegy.

Nicolaus Bruhns lived from 1665 to 1697, in Schleswig-Holstein. His Praeludium in G was a brilliant piece, with solo pedal passages throughout. Based on alternating toccata sections and fugal sections, it called for considerable technical dexterity, which it received.

Contemporary British composer Noel Rawsthorne was featured next. Like the vast majority of composers for the organ, he is an organist himself. His waltz from Dance Suite was described by Paul Rosoman as a tongue-in-cheek little piece. The Suite was commissioned for a concert celebrating the completion of the restoration of the organ in Huddersfield Town Hall in England, so it was appropriate to play it here, to cele-brate the completion of the restoration of the St. Peter’s organ. Probably because of the motive for its composition, it used a variety of registrations, including tremulant.

To end the recital, Rosoman played the composition of another Englishman (making a total of four English composers, three German, one French and one Dutch), viz. Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). Postlude in D is a fine piece, and not too Victorian in character, despite having some of the grandeur of that era, combined with ‘echoes [of] the Irish folk idiom in its modal language and melodic contours’, as the programme note had it.

The programme presented a span of historical periods and of nationalities, all played with taste, authority, variety, and an excellent technique.

Paul Rosoman is shortly to play in Poland, including at the 13^th International Organ Festival. Friday’s appreciative audience would all wish him well for this well-deserved engagement, and others he will fulfil in Europe.