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It was great fun today to give a duet recital with David Butterworth, in the spacious and lofty music room in his wonderful house at Halam. We played the Flor Peeters Concerto for Organ and Piano, and also offered the staple but excellent fare of the Tomkins duet, the Wesley duet and Franck’s sublime Prelude, Fugue and Variation, plus some solo items. David’s Grant, Degens and Bradbeer organ was as bright, crisp and colourful as ever and his large Steinway grand piano in peak condition, making Franck’s flowing piano part sing beautifully. A great way to spend a Sunday afternoon—and to a full house, too.

When acting as consultant for an organ project one of the first tasks normally is to research and write up the history of an instrument, for such knowledge can often inform the way forward. I sometimes use this research as the basis of a booklet written when the organ is complete, such as for the recent thorough rebuild by Henry Groves & Son of the 1955 Hill/Walker in Melton Mowbray parish church, on which I gave the opening recital on 29th September. Download the booklet as a pdf document to read all about the Malcolm Sargent Memorial Organ at Melton Mowbray. It’s quite a beast!
For information about my other organ booklets, please go to my Books page.

I drove back this morning from an enjoyable (if damp) stay in Hythe, on the South coast, where I had a lovely time giving a recital last night on the fine Harrison & Harrison / F H Browne organ in the parish church. This organ boasts a striking west end case proudly displaying the 16ft Contra Geigen—a rare sight to see a 16ft front in a parish church nave. Rarer still is a 16ft front in a parish church chancel, but that’s just what I found three days earlier when I gave a lunchtime recital on the fine 3-manual Brindley & Foster / Cousans in St Swithun, Retford. Amazing that Brindley managed to get his 16ft Open Diapasons in the front, but he did—and how proud they look, even with the ‘gold’ paint beginning to turn to that rather grim old hospital radiator colour.

One of the privileges of giving recitals in our great buildings is being locked in on one’s own to rehearse. All churches and cathedrals take on a different character when the visitors have left and they settle down for the night. None can be be more special than Westminster Abbey, where in preparation for my recital on Sunday Anne and I spent the whole of Saturday evening in the empty building. In my breaks from rehearsing on the 5-manual Harrison we ambled around as dusk descended, visiting memorials to poets, musicians, statesmen and scientists. Truly inspiring. If only some of their skills, wisdom and intelligence had rubbed off as we passed by!

I had the great pleasure of giving recitals on two contrasting Harrison & Harrison organs over the past week. First came a welcome return visit (my fourth) to their 1912 flagship instrument at St Mary, Redcliffe, which thundered and beguiled in equal measure. Then came a concert on their newest tracker-action organ (for which, as it happens, I was the consultant) at St Andrew’s, Bedford, which impresses in quite a different way, as its tonal scheme and subtle yet characterful voicing result in a true multum in parvo instrument. Two most enjoyable concerts yet totally different in musical effect. That, of course, is one of the travelling organist’s greatest delights (and challenges): every organ is unique. My third H&H of the summer will be Westminster Abbey on August 19th: quite different from the other two, once again. I can’t wait!

A reunion of members of CHASSOC (the New College Oxford association for former choristers, lay clerks, choral scholars, organ scholars and organists) took place in sunny Oxford on 23rd June. It was a cheery gathering, the age range of attendees stretching from H K Andrews’ choristers of the 1950s right through to the final Edward Higginbottom years. A stirring Evensong was sung, old members joining in lustily, and then one of New College’s famed dinners ended the day in fine style, with tuneful entertainment by the Choral Scholars. How can it be nearly 47 years since I started there as an organ scholar? And what a privilege that was.

After a gap of 49 years it was a treat once more to play the exciting Lewis organ in St John the Evangelist, Upper Norwood, for a recital on June 14th. I had last played the instrument in 1969 and was completely enthralled—as most are—by my first exposure to the Lewis sound world. I first experienced the Armley Schulze, with its similarly powerful Great Mixture, in much the same year and thus began my delight in really effective and well-developed Mixture-work. Congratulations to Adrian Adams who has been organist there for fifty years and is shortly to retire. Some innings!

Just back from a busy weekend. Played a recital (Couperin—with Nivers chant—and Franck) on the wonderful Dobson at Merton College Oxford on Saturday, then zoomed over to Cambridge on Sunday morning to give an all-Couperin recital on the glorious Metzler at Trinity College before Evensong. I had prepared for Trinity the previous week as the organ is a real challenge to register and all needed to be prepared and marked up in advance. I couldn’t have been made more welcome by directors of music Benjamin Nicholas and Stephen Layton, to whom I owe many thanks for the invitations and their abundant hospitality. Here are photos of both venues.

It’s not every day that one discovers an organ hidden behind a wall for a generation, but that’s what happened to me on 9th May. The former Great Yarmouth Grammar School (now Great Yarmouth Charter Academy) has a fine 1960/1991 Williamson & Hyatt organ bricked up in its hall since the mid 1990s but now revealed and ripe for cleaning. It will come up a treat.

On 1st May Anne and I enjoyed the life-enhancing experience of Simon Rattle conducting (using no score) the LSO in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, at Symphony Hall in Birmingham—the hall Sir Simon himself brought into being during his glorious years with the CBSO. Notwithstanding the five-star review The Times had given its Barbican performance the previous week, nothing could have prepared us adequately for the impact of this masterwork, played by the greatest of the UK’s orchestras in the finest UK hall, under the most sensitive imaginable direction of the UK’s leading conductor. It doesn’t come any better than that. The photo was taken just before Sir Simon entered.