Benjamin n icholas
Plays the new dobson organ of Merton College, oxford
the Merton Organ
The merton Organ
t he new dobson organ of Merton College, oxford
benjamin nicholas organ
Recorded on 10-12 January 2014 in the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks & Paul Baxter
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Page turner: Nicholas Freestone
Cover & booklet design: John Christ
Cover & booklet photography © Dobson
Pipe Organ Builders Ltd
Benjamin Nicholas photo: KT Bruce
Booklet editor: John Fallas
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
With thanks to the Warden and Fellows of the House of Scholars of Merton College, Oxford
1 J.S. Bach (1685–1750) arr. Marcel Dupré Sinfonia from Cantata No. 29 (‘Wir danken dir, Gott’), BWV29 [5:05]
2 J.S. Bach arr. Maurice Duruflé Ertödt uns durch dein‘ Güte from Cantata No. 22 (‘Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe’), BWV22 [3:32]
3 César Franck (1822–1890) Pièce héroïque [9:11]
4 John Stanley (1712–1786) Voluntary in A minor, Op.6 No. 2 [5:39]
5 Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) Prière après la Communion No. XVI from Livre du Saint Sacrement [6:36]
6 J.S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565 [9:04]
7 Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) Andante with Variations in D, Op. 82 [5:54]
8 Jean Langlais (1907–1991) Dialogue sur les mixtures No. IV from Suite Brève [3:10]
9 Marcel Dupré (1886–1971) Cortège et Litanie, Op.19 No. 2 [6:59]
10 Louis Vierne (1870–1937) Clair de lune from 24 Pièces de Fantaisie (Second Suite, No. 5) [9:17]
11 Louis Vierne Carillon de Westminster from 24 Pièces de Fantaisie (Third Suite, No. 6) [7:19]
Total playing time [71:51]
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Was there ever a more unlikely musical entity than the pipe organ? The act of making music usually requires close proximity of instrument and player. But an organist sits disconnected from the source of the sound he or she controls, fingers separated from pipes by intricate and lengthy linkages of wood and metal which – although they may be ingenious and sophisticated in construction – create, nonetheless, a physical barrier and one which, in older instruments, can also demand considerable finger strength to master.
The player, in larger organs, may sometimes be buried almost within the instrument itself, so that the balance and musical effect of the pipes themselves cannot be clearly heard. Even when the performer is actually visible, he or she usually plays with back to the listeners, so – since the organ often has few, if any, visible moving parts – there may be little observable evidence of any of the physical processes by which the sounds are created either from player or instrument. Occasionally the organist’s hand, shooting out at lightning speed to add or subtract some stops, may be discerned. But more often than not, listeners are left simply staring at a static monolith of wood and metal, the performer’s actions unseen and unknown. Compare that to the experience, say, of watching a solo pianist or violinist: instrument and player in intimate communion; physical motion and gesture a visual counterpart to the music being released from the page.
Such considerations ought by rights to have made the organ as much of a musical dinosaur as, say, the claviorganum or the carillon – an almost extinct curiosity. And yet organs have a longer unbroken history than any other musical instrument. In Delphi, in the year 90 BCE, a competition to perform on the hydraulus (an early water-powered version) was won by one Antipatros, playing for two days solid, while mosaics from the Roman era appear to show organists performing at gladiator contests and other public events. By the tenth century CE, organs were beginning to be heard in the great Gothic cathedrals, churches and chapels rising from the ground of Western Europe, the instrument’s capacity to fill large spaces with sound commending it for use in divine worship (though by the twelfth century St Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, was already complaining that the playing of his organist made the devout watch ‘as if in a theatre, not a place of worship’ – a criticism levelled at more than a few organists since!).
Thus the history of the organ – and the reason perhaps for its survival down the centuries – has been a history of reinvention, musically and mechanically, according to the changing tastes, musical style, and compositional aesthetic of the day. And the fact that the instrument can count among its most famous performers a number of significant composers (pre-eminently J.S. Bach, of course, but also, for example,
Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, César Franck and closer to our own time Olivier Messiaen) has prevented the instrument from becoming confined to the attention of organ-lovers alone.
Today we live in a golden age of organ-building and performing: there are more young players (of increasing accomplishment and virtuosity) than ever before, a steady stream of new works for the instrument from a variety of composers, organists or not, and a seemingly endless sequence of new instruments. Some of these may be careful, scholarly and authentic recreations of the organs of the past; others combine old and new so that the different colours and sonorities appropriate to many centuries of organ literature can be recreated with as much authenticity as possible. Merton College’s new Dobson organ falls into the latter category. Housed within its elegant case are 43 speaking stops – that is, ranks of pipes of different timbres – arranged over three manuals (organist-speak for keyboards) and pedals. Careful tonal design means that it is equipped to perform a large part of the organ solo repertoire as well as to accompany the services sung, most days, in the chapel by the College congregation and by the choir of Merton’s recently established choral foundation.
Benjamin Nicholas’s programme neatly demonstrates the versatility of the new instrument in three centuries of organ repertoire, and it begins with the composer who is the
instrument’s fons et origo. J.S. Bach’s surviving corpus of nearly three hundred complete works for solo organ is impressive enough, but ever since Bach’s day that body of original music has been augmented by arrangements from his other works, by both Bach himself and others. The arresting piece with which the CD begins is in fact an arrangement twice over. As a Sinfonia it was the orchestral opening movement of a cantata composed to mark the 1731 municipal elections in Leipzig, where Bach was working at the time. But the music actually began life as part of a Partita for solo violin. Of the many arrangements of the Sinfonia made since, this one is by the French organ virtuoso Marcel Dupré (of whom more below). His compatriot Maurice Duruflé drew on music from another Bach cantata in his fleet-footed transcription of Ertödt uns durch dein’ Güte, BWV22.
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor is one of the best-known works in the entire organ canon, its commanding opening notes recognisable to many who may barely have heard of J.S. Bach, and since used in contexts (such as Gothic horror movies) unimaginable to its composer. In fact, this composer may not be Bach at all: recent scholarship notes that many details of the piece are atypical of Bach’s organ style and suggests not only that a convincing case can be made for its being the work of another composer, but also that it was more likely to have been composed originally for violin.
North European organs of Bach’s day were, in many respects, more sophisticated instruments than those found at the same time in Britain. Virtuosic writing for the pedals had long been characteristic of such organs, and –whoever its composer – it is a notable feature of the Toccata and Fugue. But organs in other parts of Europe, including the United Kingdom, generally had little more than rudimentary pedals until well into the nineteenth century.
So John Stanley, the famous eighteenthcentury organist whose brilliant playing (in spite of his blindness) attracted the admiration of Handel, presided over a large instrument at the Temple Church, London, in which pedals were entirely absent. Instead of fancy footwork, English organ music of this period typically favoured florid solo writing for colourful registrations, and Stanley’s Voluntary in A minor demonstrates one of them: the reedy combination stop called the Cornet, heard here in the right hand after a slow introduction.
When Felix Mendelssohn – another accomplished organist – first visited London in the 1820s, the organ at St Paul’s Cathedral was one of the few in the city equipped with a pedalboard anything like that of the instruments he was accustomed to in Germany. It was Mendelssohn’s playing on the St Paul’s organ (astonished admirers crowding around the console to watch), playing both his own music and Bach’s, which kickstarted a movement
amongst English builders to equip their instruments with pedals on the Continental model, which at first were usually called ‘German pedals’. Mendelssohn’s Andante with Variations was composed in July 1844 during one of these London visits, and the piece allows the softer colours of the new Merton organ to be heard: warm flutes and foundation stops, and gentle undulating strings at the end.
It was during the nineteenth century that organs started to move out of churches and into that newly emerging secular temple of culture, the concert hall, and other civic spaces.
A new genre of organ music – the symphonic work arranged for two hands and feet –emerged as a result, allowing many listeners to hear orchestral repertoire for the first time. Hand-in-hand came newly invented stops, imitative of orchestral sonorities, alongside ingenious mechanical devices which enabled the player to control these increasingly large instruments. Thus players were able to recreate the colours and weight (and the volume!) of large symphonic forces, and the language of organ music in general grew more ‘orchestral’ as a result. By the 1860s the Franco-Belgian composer César Franck, organist for over thirty years of Ste-Clothilde Church in Paris, had composed a substantial four-movement work for solo organ which he actually entitled Grand Pièce symphonique; his later Pièce héroïque was composed to inaugurate the organ of the
Trocadéro in Paris, the first large concert-hall organ to be built in France, and here it allows the new Dobson instrument to display the bold, rich sonorities characteristic of this symphonic organ repertoire.
One of France’s most influential twentiethcentury organists was Marcel Dupré. With a worldwide reputation as an outstanding virtuoso (in a country which has produced more than its fair share of them), he was also a prolific composer, and not just of music for his own instrument: his 1914 cantata Psyché won the Prix de Rome. Cortège et Litanie (originally composed in 1922 for chamber ensemble, as incidental music to a play) begins as a funeral procession which, in the years immediately after the First World War, must have had poignant associations for its listeners. A litany is a prayer characterised by repeated petitions; Dupré’s begins with a short plainsong-like phrase on a flute stop, and the constant, almost hypnotic reiterations which follow – one including a brief counter-melody on Merton’s beautiful Corno di Bassetto stop – grow in strength and power, reaching a colossal climax in the closing bars.
Dupré was also an influential pedagogue, and amongst his many organ pupils was the young Olivier Messiaen. Alongside his career as an internationally famous composer and pianist, Messiaen would sustain a parallel life as organist
at the Trinity Church in Paris, where his sixtyyear tenure exceeded even the thirty-three of Franck at Ste-Clothilde, mentioned above, and the forty-three of Jean Langlais (a successor to Franck at Ste-Clothilde and a contemporary of Messiaen). Messiaen’s organ compositions constitute arguably the most significant and original body of work for the instrument since that of Bach, much of it inspired by and suffused with his deeply felt Catholic faith. In the Prière après la Communion, from Messiaen’s final organ cycle, the 1984 Livre du Saint Sacrement, rapt sustained chords accompany typically piquant solo sonorities, placing the piece within that tradition stretching back to the colourful registrations of the French Baroque. Another tiny echo of seventeenth-century tradition – French organs at that time having developed distinctive colourful sonorities which became so formalised that organ pieces were entitled simply with the names of the stops prescribed – lingers in the work by Langlais recorded here, Dialogue sur les mixtures. ‘Mixtures’ are composite stops reinforcing higher harmonics and adding brilliance to the tonal ensemble. Merton’s organ has three of them, and in Langlais’ piece they’re heard in quick-fire conversation.
Benjamin Nicholas concludes his programme with two works by the blind organist Louis Vierne, who (in the apostolic succession of great French players) had as a young man studied with César Franck and was himself
later the teacher of Marcel Dupré. Vierne was organist of Notre Dame in Paris from 1900 until his death (in mid-recital) in 1937, but arguably more significant as a composer for his instrument than as a player of it: the harmonic daring, colourful registrations and ground-breaking technical virtuosity of his many organ works make him a Debussian figure in organ literature. Clair de Lune and Carillon de Westminster, from the suites of organ pieces which Vierne entitled Pièces de Fantaisie, are both dedicated to influential organ-builders of the early twentieth century: the American Ernest Skinner, and the Englishman Henry Willis III. Clair de lune, an impressionistic moonlit nocturne, provides a solo showcase for Merton’s Harmonic Flute stop. Carillon de Westminster is in the tradition of French organ toccatas where nimble figuration on the manuals, increasingly brilliant as the piece gains momentum, is underpinned by a slower- moving pedal part. Woven into this virtuoso showpiece is the tune of the Westminster chimes (though Vierne, famously, slightly mis-transcribed the melody), and it provides an excellent aural progression through the registers on the Merton stoplist to reach the glorious sound of full organ at its conclusion – crowned, in the last line, by the addition of the Zimbelstern, a real carillon of tiny bells connected to a rotating star at the top of the organ case.
As Merton launches its new instrument, it is worth recalling that the world’s oldest stillplayable organ – at Sion in Switzerland – dates from the late 1300s, at which time Merton College had already been in existence for over a century. Organs have a record of longevity almost as respectable as Oxbridge colleges and the working life of an instrument built, like Merton’s, with craftsmanship derived from long-established traditional principles and techniques can be hundreds of years. As the college looks forward from its first 750 years, generations of organists to come, students and professionals, can give thanks for this distinguished musical instrument and what it will bring to Merton’s life, both in college and chapel.
© 2014 Michael Emery
Michael Emery is Senior Producer of the BBC Singers at BBC Radio 3, and a former Organ Scholar of Merton College.
Great Organ (II)
Bourdon 16
Open Diapason I 8
Open Diapason II 8
Harmonic Flute 8
Chimney Flute 8
Principal 4
Spire Flute 4
Nazard 2 ⅔
Fifteenth 2
Recorder 2
Tierce 1 ³⁄₅
Mixture 19.22.26.29 IV
Trumpet 8
Tremulant
Swell to Great Choir to Great
Swell Organ (III, enclosed)
Open Diapason 8
Lieblich Gedeckt 8
Salicional 8
Voix Celeste FF 8
Principal 4
Nason Flute 4
Fifteenth 2
Mixture 15.19.22.26 IV
Double Trumpet 16
Trumpet 8
Hautboy 8
Vox Humana 8
Clarion 4
Tremulant
Choir Organ (I, enclosed)
Geigen Diapason 8
Geigen Celeste FF 8
Gedeckt 8
Gemshorn 4
Open Flute 4
Doublet 2
Sesquialtera 12.17 II
Mixture 26.29.33 III
Corno di Bassetto 8
Tremulant
Major Trumpet 8
Swell to Choir
Pedal Organ
Open Diapason 16
Subbass 16
Bourdon (Great) 16
Principal 8
Bass Flute 8
Fifteenth 4
Trombone 16
Trumpet 8
Great to Pedal
Swell to Pedal
Choir to Pedal
Zimbelstern
Mechanical key action
Electric stop & combination actions 61/32
Dobson Pipe Organ Builders of Lake City, Iowa, was founded by Lynn A. Dobson in 1974. In these forty years, we have built ninety new pipe organs and rebuilt or restored several dozen others. Substantial new instruments can be found in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles – both fourmanual organs, of 124 and 105 speaking stops respectively. While these landmark projects show our firm’s depth, the many instruments that support vibrant parish music programmes established our reputation and attracted the interest of Merton College and the consultant they had appointed for the project, Paul Hale.
To become familiar with our work, the Rev Dr Simon Jones, Merton’s Chaplain, and Benjamin Nicholas, Reed Rubin Organist and Director of Music, visited six of our instruments, in which they discerned a sympathy for vocal music, a flexibility to accommodate the works of many eras, and a design approach that respected the needs of the performer and honoured the architecture. In December 2010, we were delighted to learn that we had been chosen from an international field to build an instrument for one of Oxford’s oldest colleges. The new organ, our ninety-first, would be completed in time for the 750th anniversary of Merton’s founding in 2014. It would be only the third American-built instrument sent to the UK since the Second World War.
As in many of our instruments, the tonal design of Op. 91 combines a classical framework with a nineteenth-century love of colour and dynamic variety. The result is a tonal palette with finely differentiated foundations and a wide range of dynamic possibility. Our approach is a realignment of Organ Reform thinking, in which concern for a specific solo literature drove the design, with the proper accompaniment of singing too often the poor stepchild. We turned this notion on its head, striving first of all to create an instrument that would be a worthy servant of choral song, with its role as interpreter of literature being a somewhat lesser consideration. Fortunately, these goals are not mutually exclusive, as we trust this present recording demonstrates.
The Gothic architecture of the Chapel, whose construction was begun in 1290 and completed in 1450, strongly influenced the organ’s visual design. Aspects of later elements, such as Christopher Wren’s Classical screen and William Butterfield’s Gothic Revival stalls and tile floor, are echoed in the organ case. Like the building and its furnishings, the new instrument reflects our own time while honouring the history and character of those things that have gone before.
As with its tonal and visual aspects, the technical design of the organ represents a synthesis of traditional and modern. Slider soundboards and traditional mechanical action are used throughout (even for the Major Trumpet 8’, which speaks on 10-inch wind pressure) but the trackers are made of carbon fibre rather than wood. An extensive combination action is provided, with stepper and separate memory levels for general and divisional pistons. To facilitate communication with the choir, a monitor system with two cameras and its own audio equipment has been provided; mounted in a drawer above the attached console, the control panel and video screens disappear into the case when not needed.
The opportunity to design and construct an organ for a building so steeped in history almost never comes to an American company. But far from being a place of musty torpor, Merton Chapel’s ancient stones enclose a space of vibrant life. We are honoured to be a part of it.
John A. Panning Vice President & Tonal Director Dobson Pipe Organ Builders
Benjamin Nicholas
Benjamin Nicholas has held the full-time post of Reed Rubin Organist and Director of Music of Merton College, Oxford since September 2012. He has conducted the College Choir on tours to the USA and France, on BBC Radio 3 and on recordings for Delphian. From 2000 until 2012 he directed the choir of men and boys at Tewkesbury Abbey, and was largely responsible for the founding of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum when the Abbey School closed in 2006. He led that choir on thirteen overseas tours and in seven recordings on Delphian – including discs devoted to Weelkes, Mozart, Stanford and Rutter – and was Director of Choral Music at Dean Close School from 2005 until 2012. In 2011 he succeeded Andrew Carwood as Director of the Schola Cantorum at the Edington Festival of Music, and in 2013 became Festival Director.
Benjamin Nicholas has conducted much of the large-scale choral repertoire including Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, Verdi’s Requiem and the Berlioz Te Deum. Recent concerts include Holst’s Sa¯vitri with Sarah Connolly and the Trondheim Soloists in the Cheltenham Music Festival, and Bach’s Mass in B minor in Cheltenham Town Hall. He has commissioned new work from numerous composers including Bob Chilcott, Rihards Dubra, Howard Goodall, Grayston Ives, Gabriel Jackson, Howard Skempton and Philip Wilby.
Benjamin was a chorister in the Choir of Norwich Cathedral before holding organ scholarships at Lincoln College, Oxford and St Paul’s Cathedral. As an undergraduate he was Conductor of The Oxford Chamber Choir, and in 2000 held the post of Director of Music of St Luke’s Church, Chelsea.
In
the Beginning
Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips
DCD34072
Established in 2008, Merton College’s new choral foundation is rapidly emerging as a major force in collegiate choral music. Its debut recording – bookended by Gabriel Jackson’s ravishing version of the rarely set Johannine Prologue and Copland’s glowing account of the first seven days of creation – makes inventive play with the theme of beginnings and endings, in a sequence of Renaissance and modern works that reflects the range and reach of the choir’s daily repertoire.
‘… will undoubtedly establish them as one of the UK’s finest choral ensembles. Listening to their superb performances and seamless blending of voices, it’s hard to believe that the choir is only four years old’ — Gramophone, December 2011, EDITOR’S CHOICE
Advent at Merton
Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips
DCD34122
The beginning of Advent is celebrated with a particular solemnity at Merton. For its second recording, the choir explores the musical riches that adorn this most special time in the church’s year, centring on a newly commissioned sequence of Magnificat antiphons from seven leading composers including Howard Skempton, E ˉ riks Ešenvalds and Sir John Tavener. The mingled hopes, fears and expectations of the season are beautifully articulated by this fervent body of young singers.
‘an immensely accomplished and responsive mixed-voice choir … Delphian’s recorded sound is beautiful’ — International Record Review, December 2012
The Merton Collection Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips
DCD34134
In 2014, the University of Oxford’s Merton College celebrates its 750th year. Benjamin Nicholas and Peter Phillips’ specially conceived journey through seven centuries of choral repertoire provides a bird’s-eye view of some important moments in musical history, and features two composers personally associated with the College – John Dunstaple and Lennox Berkeley – as well as three new works commissioned for the anniversary celebrations. The choir, a relatively recent addition to this illustrious college’s complement of treasures, gives stylish and committed performances in the famous acoustic of Merton’s thirteenth-century chapel.
‘fine musicianship, commitment and versatility … emotion untarnished by world-weariness’ — Choir & Organ, January/February 2014
Thomas Weelkes: Sacred Choral Music
Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum / Benjamin Nicholas
DCD34070
Thomas Weelkes is remembered as one of the outstanding English composers of the seventeenth century. This survey of his services, verse anthems and sacred madrigals features first recordings of several works in new reconstructions by scholar Peter James. Benjamin Nicholas’s Tewkesbury choir delivers telling performances which passionately convey the range, imagination and technical accomplishment of Weelkes’ settings.
‘Weelkes is a composer to make you think again, and Tewkesbury Abbey currently has the choir to present him in strongest colours and with the most personal accent. The trebles splendidly vindicate the tradition that places them at the heart of English cathedral music’
— Gramophone, April 2009
Stanford: Choral Music
Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum / Benjamin Nicholas
DCD34087
The Tewkesbury boys and men turn their attention to that doyen of Anglican church music, Charles Villiers Stanford. Alongside familiar gems from the Evensong repertoire, sung with characteristic vigour and freshness, the programme includes the six little-known Bible Songs, each followed by its associated hymn.
‘The choir sings with confidence and fulsomeness of tone’ — Church Music Quarterly, March 2011
‘I cannot remember when I last heard the solos in the G major Evening Service performed quite so beautifully’ — Choir & Organ, May/June 2011
Choral Evensong from Tewkesbury Abbey
The Abbey School Choir, Tewkesbury / Benjamin Nicholas
DCD34019
For thirty-two years the Abbey School Choir sang daily evensong in Tewkesbury Abbey. Capturing one of their final services, this recording offers a treasurable memento of a uniquely English Office, complete with lessons and prayers. Reborn as Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum, the choir was immediately signed by Delphian, and thus this is both a swansong and a recording debut.
‘Gabriel Jackson’s Tewkesbury Service is at the core of this outstanding recording, with Tallis providing an introit, Statham the responses, and Vaughan Williams and Howells the anthems. The psalms are sung in a wonderfully deliberate fashion (one of them to a gorgeous chant by Alcock) and with a very atmospheric accompaniment. The lessons are beautifully read’ — Choir & Organ, July/August 2010
Songbook
The Trebles of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum DCD34097
This ‘songbook’ is unique to the choristers of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum, now housed at Dean Close Preparatory School. ‘Essentially, it’s a showcase for the Abbey trebles,’ explains Director of Music Benjamin Nicholas. ‘I’ve always been keen to build each boy up as a soloist, not with the express idea of them singing lots of solos, but so that they can learn to sing in a soloistic way.’ This is evident above all in the already highly distinctive singing of 11-year-old Laurence Kilsby, whose gifts won him the BBC Chorister of the Year competition in 2009 and who features here in two Shelley settings by Roger Quilter, the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria and John Ireland’s sincerely felt Passiontide motet Ex ore innocentium.
‘A mouth-watering programme … excellent performances of impressive consistency’ — Gramophone, CRITICS’ CHOICE OF 2011
The Three Kings: Music for Christmas from Tewkesbury Abbey Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum / Benjamin Nicholas DCD34047
In the vast, echoing space of their medieval home the boys and men of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum celebrate the awe and mystery of Christmas, ushering in the birth of the Christ-child with a sequence of carols from the last two centuries that combines familiar names with offerings from some of today’s foremost composers.
‘I doubt whether there are many more admirable choirs outside Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge than the Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum … Nicholas’s choir give proof yet again of the qualities that place them firmly in the front rank: flair, acumen, versatility and poise’ — Church Times, December 2007
The Kelvingrove Organ: Overture Transcriptions
Timothy Byram-Wigfield
DCD34004
Timothy Byram-Wigfield, Master of Music at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, plays a variety of Edwardian transcriptions on one of the world’s finest concert organs, the Lewis organ in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Gallery.
‘Exhilarating … Never daunted by the fearsome difficulties of many of Lemare’s and Best’s arrangements, nor fazed by the limited 1901 controls of the chunky console, Byram-Wigfield delights in finding just the right sounds, textures and tempi to make these works sound like real organ music. There is delicacy, humour, drive, vigour, lightness of touch and heroic utterance here, to which these fine compositions respond by revealing their all’ — Organists’ Review, May 2004, EDITOR’S CHOICE
The Usher Hall Organ, Vol I
John Kitchen
DCD34022
The first ever recording of the newly refurbished Norman & Beard concert organ in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, from internationally acclaimed organist John Kitchen. In an eclectic selection of repertoire demonstrating the instrument’s sonic versatility and brilliance of tone, Kitchen ranges from transcriptions of popular orchestral works to the tortured ‘Weinen, Klagen’ of Franz Liszt.
‘Built in 1914, the monumental organ in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh has been restored to its former Edwardian glory. City Organist John Kitchen celebrates the aesthetic of that period. Three Handel marches are delivered in grand style, with irrepressible brio. Kitchen brings rhythmic swagger and élan to Hollins’ Triumphal March (complete with carillon), Walton’s Orb and Sceptre and Bach’s “St Anne” Prelude and Fugue’ — Evening Standard, May 2004
Organs of Edinburgh
John Kitchen, Duncan Ferguson, Nicholas Wearne, Simon Nieminski, Thomas Laing-Reilly, Michael Bonaventure et al
DCD34100 (4 CDs + 88pp book)
Open this full-colour, large-format book and step into a world of glorious architecture and fascinating history. Edinburgh’s churches and concert halls are home to a rich variety of pipe organs, and twenty-two of the most notable are surveyed here, with extensive information on both the instruments and their venues. Meanwhile twelve illustrious players – all with deep-rooted Edinburgh connections – demonstrate the instruments’ full range and versatility on four accompanying CDs. The full gamut of the repertoire is here, and Edinburgh’s organs have the voices to match. Isn’t it time to lift the veil from some of the closestguarded treasures of one of the world’s great cities?
Includes extensive instrument and venue photography, and detailed specifications for all 22 instruments.
‘a masterpiece of publishing’ — International Record Review, January 2011
