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This month’s opens recital opens with one of Bach more unusual works – the four-part Toccata, BWV566. Existing in two versions – one in C Major – I always prefer the one in E Major because the brilliance of the key’s tonality with its sharps infuses the glittering music work with an iridescence I think more suits it.

Two works of the Californian Clarence Mader (1904-1971) who was, together with his wife Ruth, prominent in the Los Angeles’ organ scene until their death in a freeway accident. The languid October Interlude, with its long, sensual phrases, expresses the gilded autumn Californian sun in contrast to the more energetic, humorous virtuoso study Afternoon of a Toad. His music almost never heard outside the USA – although I gave the UK premiers back in 1993.
Read about him and Ruth at: https://www.maderscholarshipfund.org/

Liszt’s powerful Variations will test my ingenuity with the Meeting House organ to the limit… But I’ve tried it and am looking forward to the challenge of making what is an instrument of relatively few stops sound like something much, much bigger. These beautiful variations – written at a time of intense sorrow for Liszt following the death of a second of his three children – are profoundly soul-searching.

And to end – that brilliant, rather fleeting ésquisse Mouvement of Jean Berveiller that the legendary Jeanne Demessieux recorded at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral just shortly before her untimely death in 1968.

By: Janine Thorogood
Last updated: Monday, 7 October 2024