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wolsey

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Everything posted by wolsey

  1. Thanks for the reassurance, Morwenna. I wish it well.
  2. In wishing the new list well, I hope it will seek somehow to complement the fine work which has been done for ten years now by Stephen Smith at www.organrecitals.com.
  3. Similar recent fittings are at Hampton Court and St George's, Hanover Square. Laukhuff lights are very expensive though.
  4. Why 'premature'? Peter Gould (now 62) was appointed to Derby in 1983. By any reckoning, he has had a very long and successful tenure there.
  5. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    Find a friend who's a BIOS member and ask to see the recent BIOS Journal, or buy it here.
  6. There was also a rather silly headline in Norman Lebrecht's blog (http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2014/03/shock-in-cloisters-as-st-pauls-cathedral-appoints-a-woman-organ-scholar.html) about 'shock in cloisters'. When one considers that there are female cathedral organists in the UK; Jane Watts was organ scholar at Westminster Abbey in the mid-1980s; the Chapter of St Paul's includes two female canons, why is this a 'shock in cloisters'? Incidentally, does St Paul's have cloisters?
  7. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    Despite the publication of details of the 2014/15 International Organ Series in recent Pull Out All The Stops literature, programmes and flyers, the website is curiously at fault as you rightly say. Booking is already open for the individual concerts of the series if you look up their dates: 29 September - Jennifer Bate; 18 October - Cameron Carpenter; 10 December - Martin Baker; 2 February 2015 - Ann-Elise Smoot; 27 April - Thomas Trotter. As mentioned in post 13 above, the free lunchtime recital series begins in September, and "details are available from April 2014". Apparently, "our free organ recital series... features Organ Curator William McVicker, our Festival Organ Scholar Weston Jennings and up-and-coming organists from London colleges."
  8. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    At the risk of repeating myself - as well as what has been written by others who have heard the organ live - the sound of the organ and the acoustics have been noticeably improved. When one is used to hearing organs in buildings with a significant period of reverberation, an organ in a concert hall will never sound 'perfect'; the 'ideal' acoustic for an organ is not the same as that for an orchestra. Whatever one's opinion of the sound quality of the recent radio relays (by whatever means), these broadcasts will never convey the full impression of sitting in the RFH auditorium - nor will CDs. As an example, the thrilling tutti I heard live in the last movement of the Saint-Saens Symphony last Wednesday bore no relation to the emasculated sound and balance currently available on BBC iPlayer. Having attended two recitals and two concerts in the POTS festival (and having heard and played the organ at other private events beforehand), I am pleased that one of the capital's concert halls is proving to be a superb venue in which to experience music-making, and that its organ has been re-instated with considerable success. Both the ambience and organ of the RFH in 2014 are quite different beasts to those known hitherto.
  9. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    But if, from an orchestral point of view, the hall's acoustic was improved markedly during the refurbishment, why should yet more work be carried out? I take it you've been to an orchestral concert there since the hall was re-opened?
  10. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    As I said on another forum, I was at the recital, and the combination (played on the swell) appeared to include the 16' Quintadena. The sound though was superior and more convincing when heard live than via the BBC.
  11. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    Why should he take legal counsel before making his disclosure? He came onto the platform with a BBC mike and a sheet of paper from which he read his prepared announcement. In it, he said that he and his wife were "not allowed" by the publisher to play the four-hands piano version on the organ "because of unproven violation of [the] intellectual and moral interest of the composer." I was fortunate to hear them play The Rite in Haarlem in July 2012. If the premise were continued, should the accompanists amongst us be forbidden from playing Elgar's The Spirit of the Lord; Vaughan WIlliams' Rise, heart; Let all the world etc. on the organ? Was Philip Scriven (with Martin Baker) prevented from playing The Rite at Westminster Cathedral in July last year? For what it's worth, I attended the first of forty-two organ recitals at the RFH from 1974-1988 on 30 October 1974 (Jean Costa) at the age of sixteen. To my mind (and ears) - and having played the organ very briefly both before and after restoration, the hall acoustics and the instrument are both vastly improved.
  12. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    The Wednesdays at 5.55 series will not be re-instated. They were seen in more recent years as the sideshow to the main or 'real' musical event of the evening at 7.30pm. The International Organ Series and the other 7.30pm organ recitals before the closure of the Hall *were*/*are* the main musical event of the evening, thus confirming the organ in the mainstream of music-making. Of course, the new lunchtime recitals will be a regular series.
  13. wolsey

    RFH Organ

    I attended the Organ Gala Launch Concert, and am listening to it again on BBC iPlayer with the Festival brochure in front of me. I think some perspective is needed when viewing the concert. It is the opening event of a three-month festival celebrating the return of the RFH organ, so surely it can be integrated into one evening of music-making with singers and other instruments? There are three celebrity recitals (John Scott, Thomas Trotter and Olivier Latry) - and other concerts/organists besides... Moreover, the International Organ Series will feature five evening recitals from September 2014 - April 2015, and a free lunchtime recital series begins in September 2014.
  14. I believe that the following organists write with their left hand: Simon Preston Stephen Cleobury David Hill and me...
  15. The RSCM's Sunday by Sunday is an excellent quarterly resource (available to its subscribing Individual and Affiliate members) with this sort of information.
  16. It's listed third in the discography.
  17. You may learn much from listening to the recordings by Peterborough Cathedral (Vann/Newberry) (originally on the Hyperion Label) and St John's College, Cambridge (Guest/Runnett). Barry Rose has said that he was influenced by the latter.
  18. I assume you're aware of this recording...
  19. In this case, by the appointee himself.
  20. The voluntary was played at practically Howells' metronome mark (as do I) which, in my copy, is crotchet =116, not 114 as Vox Humana states. Three other tempo markings in the piece are qualified by metronome indications.
  21. The online reference sources - even including Oxford Music Online - all refer to 'a setting' of O little town of Bethlehem. In his CD booklet notes for Wells Cathedral's Hyperion recording, however, the Rev Alan Luff says about the carol that "It is often sung to Vaughan Williams’s arrangement of an English folk tune, but Walford Davies wrote two tunes to it." [my italics]
  22. Professor Higginbottom's forthcoming retirement (a better verb to use) has been known to the cognoscenti for some time. Since the summer, it's been a case of when, precisely, the post would be advertised.
  23. There were some minor tonal/voicing changes in the 1992 session of work, and remember reading about it at the time - possibly in that year's Christmas edition of the Radio Times of all places. I'm pretty sure the Great Mixture IV (which dominates the chorus in the BWV 547i you mentioned) has been revised.
  24. ... and Huw Williams has been appointed as his successor.
  25. My memory has faded since I played the organ part from the the orchestral version in 1995, but I'm pretty sure it's easier, since the orchestra covers much of the faster/fussier bits found in the 'organ only' version. I stand to be corrected, but I think that the relentless semiquaver figuration of the Sanctus is divided between the hands and so less fearsome; the orchestral strings play the sustained chords above it.
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