Author: Paul

May has been a pleasant, well-balanced month of playing, advising and social times.

On May 9th I gave the opening recital – to a pleasantly full church – at St Andrew’s Church, Orwell (near Cambridge).  This was a clever electrification and rebuilding of a pretty ropy old tracker organ, designed by Canon Christopher Ivory and very neatly executed by Cousans Organs (these days based not at Lincoln but in Coalville, Leicestershire).

All sounded fine in the spacious village church and the digital basses (added owing to lack of room for any open 16ft stops) blended seamlessly with the pipes.  The reception afterwards wasn’t bad either.

I was pleased to be invited back to play at Tamworth on April 9th, whose fine pneumatic-action Harrison & Harrison (impeccably restored by Willis in recent years) packs a real punch down the church  It was a Lent/Passiontide programme, so a good opportunity to enjoy the wealth of softer colours this organ has.  Another enjoyable recital this month was at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, whose grand Hill / H&H is a total joy to play, the 32fts purring either side of the player.

The start of April found us in beautiful Beverley, attending as many concerts as we could afford at the imaginative top-quality New Paths Music Festival, conceived and directed with seemingly inexhaustible energy by Libby Burgess.  The Minster hosted several events, notably the competition among Royal Birmingham Conservatoire organ students for the Dame Gillian Weir Messiaen prize.  Some really outstanding playing hugely impressed the large audience.

In addition to many chamber music performances in smaller venues, St Mary’s – the huge parish church at the other end of the town – was used for concerts such as memorable performances of the three late Schubert piano sonatas by Martin Roscoe on consecutive days. Among the other standout concerts were some extraordinary accordion playing by Miloš Milivojević, partnered by the guitar skills of Craig Ogden, Ashley Riches singing Brahms and Julian Bliss (clarinet) with Libby Burgess.  Can’t wait for the next Festival!

I always enjoy my organ consulting adventures in Ireland.  This time it was a two-day stay in Belfast (March 26 & 27), surveying and then reporting on the large organ in the Whitla Hall at Queen’s University.  The 1905 magnum opus of William Andrews of Bradford (who?  I hear you ask), it was electrified by John Compton in 1949-50 and thoroughly modernised by Hill, Norman & Beard in 1969.  It now needs a complete refurbishment, following which it deserves to regain its place as one of Belfast’s finest instruments.

On March 9th we attended a concert in Birmingham Town Hall, given by one of our favourite choirs – Ex Cathedra – whose founder/director, Jeffrey  Skidmore, remains at the helm some 50 years after establishing the choir.  This concert comprised much of repertoire which he has discovered and edited, recordings of which helped make the choir’s name: 17th and 18th century music from Mexico, Bolivia and Brazil, plus a mass setting by the Italian Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726), who worked in Córdoba (Peru).  A scintillating afternoon.

The first weekend in March saw Anne and me back in Aldeburgh, at the same hotel where we had spent our honeymoon during the 1988 October Half Term holiday.  Lovely though it was to be back there – and the weather was beautiful – there was work to be done, namely surveying and then reporting on the fine organ (Hunter / Bishop) in the parish church of St Peter & St Paul. We caught up with several friends whilst in the area and had a Thoroughly Good Time.

On Saturday 22nd February a cheery audience listened to my afternoon recital on the grand J.J. Binns at Rochdale Town Hall. Not only Binns’s loudest organ, it’s arguably his finest, though having been for a time a Trustee of the Nottingham Albert Hall’s even larger Binns, I ought to whisper that.

I made a DAC visit to Louth on 4th February.  This and Boston ‘stump’ are the two great glories among Lincolnshire churches.  The organs are fine, too: an H&H at Boston and a Forster & Andrews / HNB at Louth, which needs just a little restorative work. A very enjoyable day out.

Sunday 2nd February saw me attending a most enjoyable recital by Declan Poole on the 11-rank 1935 Compton cinema organ in Fentham Hall – at the Hampton-in-Arden end of Hampton Lane in Solihull, the road on which I lived as a teenager.  Adroit and musical playing on a well-maintained instrument.

On January 22nd I made my monthly visit to the Nicholson organ works to inspect progress with the Gloucester Cathedral organ.  All is going well with many pipes made and voiced.  Unit chests under construction and this photograph shows the inside mechanism of one of them.