Author: Paul

A wonderful concert this evening – Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.1 and the Fifth Symphony of Mahler. It was Sir Mark Elder’s final appearance in Nottingham with the Hallé, rapturously received by a full house, with a lengthy standing ovation before the Symphony Hall management made a presentation to Sir Mark, who gave a delightful speech of thanks.

I’ve never met Sir Mark, but his mother was at boarding school in Hastings with my mother in the late 1930s, and as both families lived in Crouch End in the early 1950s, my mother would occasionally visit, baby Hale in tow.  I so admire what he has achieved with the Hallé – especially their Elgar performances – and their Mahler V tonight was quite sublime.

Anne and I visited the delightful village church at Glapthorn, Northants.  It was a social visit to friends, but for me something of a pilgrimage too, as the little 1937 Roger Yates organ there has long been one I had hoped to visit.  Its 1-manual stop-list is given in Sumner’s seminal book ‘The Organ’, which I won as a Solihull School Music prize aged 15 in June 1967, so I’ve known about it for many years, and as my enthusiasm has grown for the excellent work carried out by Roger Yates, this little gem is one I have very much wished to play.  It did not disappoint!

Wonderful voicing and an extraordinary dynamic range for such a small instrument – look it up on the NPOR. A superbly effective swell box encloses all except the basses of the Bourdon and Open Diapason.  From delicate and silvery Aeoline to powerful Plein Jeu (with 17th) it sounds like a cathedral organ in miniature.

Today I had great fun playing the large and splendid Compton in the Astoria Centre, Barnsley.  Kevin Grunill has, over the years, made a first class job of its installation and enlargement.  It’s a much travelled instrument, made for the Astoria, Purley in 1934 (the same year as the Compton which found partial use in Solihull School chapel, to my youthful joy), it’s been rehoused in East Kilbride, Carluke, Spalding and Sheffield before finding its final (?) and finest home at the Astoria Centre.

It now boasts 18 ranks (5 down to 16ft) — large for a cinema/theatre organ — and is exceptionally well balanced when heard from the auditorium.

The Echo Organ at Liverpool Cathedral has been ‘prepared-for’ since 1926!  Owing to suitable pipework (and sufficient funds) becoming available, organ-builder David Wells and his team are busily installing it.  Situated at the far south-east corner of the Sanctuary, right up in the triforium, its effect in the building will be exquisite.  I was visiting it yesterday, in order to write it up for Organists’ Review, so this photograph is a sneak preview.

Just back from a enjoyable Organ Club Tour, based in delightful guest quarters at Buckfast Abbey.  Leaving aside the rather curate’s eggish new organs in the Abbey, for me the stand-out instruments were the two we played in Totnes.  In St Mary’s church is a fine Father Willis, moved to the west end and beautifully restored by William Drake in 1988.  Its 12-stop Great Organ could give a few cathedral instruments a run for their money.

Across the river is the church of St John the Evangelist, which suffered a terrible fire in 1976 and was rebuilt in modern style.  In 1983 William Drake installed an uncompromising 2/24 werkprinzip instrument, which is one of the best-voiced such instruments in the country and should be better known.

Yesterday was a special day for the musicians of New College Oxford; many of us attended a wonderful Memorial Evensong for Sir David Lumsden. The choir was on superb form, singing two works written for it – Harris’s ‘Faire is the Heaven’ and (for an introit) ‘Drop, drop, slow tears’ by Kenneth Leighton – the profoundly moving final movement of his ‘Crucifixus pro nobis’, commissioned by David Lumsden for N.C. choir in 1961.

Earlier in the day David and Sheila’s ashes had been interred in the Cloisters, on the north side near the bell-tower.  A finely incised memorial stone marks the spot, close to where N.C. alumnus James Bowman is also remembered.

Yesterday Olivier Latry gave a wonderful performance on the superb Dobson organ in Merton College Chapel, to celebrate its 10th anniversary.  I can’t think where that decade has gone, as memories of working on the project (a real highlight for me) are as fresh as ever.  The large Dobson factory was completely destroyed by fire eight years later; it is good to be able to report that the new factory is now built and being fitted out with machinery.  Exciting times ahead for Dobson after their dreadful bad luck.

I’ve just returned from an interesting and enjoyable week in the USA, visiting organs by the J.P. Buzard firm, in advance of writing an article for Choir & Organ.  I arrived in Chicago just in time to see everyone out in the streets looking up at the eclipse – good timing!

Visited organs in Chicago, Nashville and the company’s home town, Champaign.  Wonderful instruments and lovely hospitable hosts.

Symphony Hall Birmingham, St John Passion, Bach, performed by Ex Cathedra

As a teenager in the late 1960s / early 1970s I would attend Birmingham Town Hall every Good Friday, where the City Choir and the Choral Union, together with the CBSO, with Roy Massey at the mighty Willis organ, would alternate the St John and the St Matthew Passions.  These were performances on a massive scale, leavened by also attending the more stylish interpretations offered in St Philip’s Cathedral by the lithe Birmingham Bach Choir under Richard Butt, with Orchestra da Camera and Roy Massey at the organ.  Jeffrey Skidmore, a Birmingham lad one year older than me, also attended such performances and in 1969 founded Ex Cathedra to offer even more stylish interpretations than the Bach Choir.  An astonishing  fifty-five years later, the choir has long been a much-loved West Midlands institution, renowned for its imaginative programmes, outreach work, and the researches still being carried out by Jeffrey. Their St John on Good Friday celebrated the 300th anniversary of the work’s first performance, augmenting it with motets, readings and clever organ improvisations (by Rupert Jeffcoat).  All I have to say is that if J.S. Bach had heard this concert, he would have been utterly delighted, as was a large audience, by its beauty, drama and loving attention to detail.  A moving and truly memorable experience.

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon

Anne and I attended a matinée performance of Ben and Imo, a play by Mark Ravenhill.  A tour de force for the two actors (Victoria Yeates and Samuel Barnett), the play tells of a turbulent year (1952-3) in which Imogen Holst arrives at Aldeburgh to ‘help’ Benjamin Britten write Gloriana, a full-scale opera commissioned for the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  Their developing relationship is complex, intense, turbulent and creative.  There is not a dull moment in this captivating and thought-provoking play, which I recommend most warmly to anyone reading this.