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Anne sang for the weekend of August 17-18 in Hereford Cathedral with the excellent choir of St Peter’s Nottingham.  I was able to walk along the river and take these photographs. Note Bulldog Dan, of Enigma Variations fame.

August 8th saw us showing an old friend around Lincoln.  Castle, prison (!) and cathedral all impressed. To my delight, the 1898 Father Willis console is on display in the cathedral’s excellent new museum.  Here are shots of both stop jambs, to entertain organists reading my news this month.

August has been a pleasantly varied month – without too many organs, but busy. Anne and I spent a lovely day on 2nd August at Althorp House in Northamptonshire, the late Princess of Wales’ family home.

Near the lake, on an island in the middle of which Diana is buried, is an elegant temple in her memory, containing various items which bring to mind both her remarkable character and also the tragic manner in which she met her death.

It was a beautiful, tranquil day, and we were moved by the Diana memorials and utterly delighted by the astonishing collection of fine art within the house itself, which visitors are not allowed to photograph.  A visit is highly recommended.

On Saturday 27th I had the great delight of giving an afternoon recital on the very fine instrument in St Giles – a handsome church in Lincoln.  The case and much pipework survives from the H.C. Lincoln organ of 1795, with some Swell pipework by Fr. Willis and later work – fine reeds, an elegant mahogany console and responsive tubular-pneumatic action – by Cousans of Lincoln.

Lewis Paul and Chris Hind have recently cleaned the Great, releathering the various complex layers of pneumatics.  All now sound bright once again and works perfectly.  A treat to perform there.

On Thursday 25th I much enjoyed a lunchtime recital at Worksop Priory by Angela Sones, who has recently been appointed director of music at the Birmingham Anglo-Catholic church of St Alban where I spent my teenage years soaking up the liturgy and J.L. Pearson’s wonderful French Gothic architecture.  The choir and organ weren’t bad either!  Truly impressive that Angela could play at all, as her car had been written off (with her at the wheel) in a smash on the M1 only the day before.  That’s professionalism for you.

On Tuesday 23rd the family of the late Dominic Gwynn held a small ‘do’ outside the Goetze & Gwynn workshop (near Worksop), in Dominic’s memory, and mainly for some of us who had been unable to attend his funeral in St Cuthbert’s, Wells.  His long-time colleague Edward Bennett formed some of us into a choir, singing madrigals by Wilbye (‘Adieu, sweet Amaryllis’) and Gibbons (‘The Silver Swan’, naturally), plus ‘Salvator Mundi’ and ‘If ye love me’ (Tallis).  It was a lovely, gentle, thoughtful evening of which one felt sure Dominic would have approved.

We had a particularly busy final week in July, which started by attending two fabulous Proms at the RAH on Sunday 21st, with our son Morgan, on his 33rd birthday.  The morning Prom was a concert by the combined forces of my two favourite a cappella ensembles – The King’s Singers and Voces 8.  We had a great view and their singing was as sublime as it always is.

Going down the stairs of the RAH I noticed out of a landing window the former Royal College of Organists – that building which terrified so many of us as we made the long climb to destiny up the stairs to the organ hall, preparing to meet the examiners and play our AR/FRCO pieces.  It looks a bit neglected now, but – our terror aside – it is a very special, indeed unique and beautiful building. After a long lunch and a visit to the Natural History Museum (I still miss ‘Dippy’ in the grand nave which is the main entrance hall) it was back to the RAH for something very special:  Sir Mark Elder’s final Prom with the Hallé.

We had attended their Mahler 5 in Nottingham (see 27th June news item and photos) and hardly expected that that glorious performance could be matched or bettered, but their Proms performance was just superlative.  The Prommers went wild, Sir Mark gave a typically well-prepared and witty speech, and then we were treated to Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit as a delicious encore.  What a day!

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.