Malcolm Riley
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Posts posted by Malcolm Riley
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Further to the comments about organ recital organisers, there were one or two interesting moments during Dr Francis Jackson's recital yesterday afternoon at Ally Pally. On two occasions Tannoy announcements could be heard filtering through from another part of the complex (the Ice Rink, perhaps) and the custodians of the organ seemed to think nothing of wandering around during the recital, both in the organ gallery (in full view) and in front of the close-circuit TV screens). This was rather distracting and a discourtesy to Dr Jackson whose playing was as vivid and hugely enjoyable as ever. His programme was beautifully judged, though he perplexed one or two of the locals in the audience who couldn't work out why the encore wasn't "on the programme". FAJ enjoyed himself so much that he added another encore - the Cocker Tuba Tune - which the organ just about coped with! It was a memorable occasion. Astonish to think that FAJ first heard the Ally Pally organ live in 1936 but hadn't given a recital on it until yesterday, 73 years later. Where were the press and TV crews to record this event? Did they give it a mention in their local bulletins beforehand?
MKR
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I, too, went through a big Howellsian phrase in my teens and was shocked at the scoffing reaction of my 2nd year degree supervisor, Hugh Wood, when I claimed Howells (and Finzi) as composers I greatly admired. Howells' output was so wide and varied that it is bound to be patchy. I've ploughed through the Sonata (no 2 - the GTB one), the Partita and the early Sonata no 1 and they are good in parts, but hard to bring off in performance. I think it was Christopher Palmer who judged that the 2nd Sonata might have been an orchestral piece manque. It meanders too much and is rhythmically over-fussy. The Psalm Preludes, though, are jolly useful in all manner of circumstances and Paean (taken at the right lick) can keep an audience glued to their pews.
The early chamber pieces are astonishingly good, in particular the Clarinet Rhapsodic Quintet (right up there with the Brahms) and some of the one-off pieces such as Sir Patrick Spens and Penguinski, which are tremendously vivid and lithe. The Concerto for Strings is monumental, particularly in the stirring Boult recording (with HH present) which EMI issued in the 1970s (the orange-coloured LP also featured Bliss's Music for Strings). Hymnus Paradisi is, rightly, seen as his masterpiece. He never quite recaptured that white-heat intensity with the later Missa Sabriensis ('The Severn Bore'), English Mass or Stabat Mater (depsite Paul Spicer's devoted advocacy). Hymnus should always be an overwhelming experience for everyone taking part, whether singer, orchestral musician or listener. It's the nearest classical/choral piece I can think of which is the equivalent to Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound'. On 30 May 1981 I attended a performance of Hymnus given by the Cambridge Philharmonic in King's College Chapel. Just before the concert began (with The Lark Ascending and Sea Pictures in the first half) there was a murmur among the audience as Howells himself appeared and shuffled slowly along to the front row (with a nurse-/minder in attendance). I believe that this was the last time he heard the piece live. I had a brief chat with him at the interval and he signed my vocal score...after writing 'Herbert' he looked at me and said "I enjoyed doing that"! and proceeded to praise David Willcocks' Bach Choir recording (still the most vivid and atmospheric: a Kingsway Hall classic).
MKR
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As part of an ongoing project to create an online Whitlock Photo Album I wonder whether any members might be able to help track down photos (or graven images) of any of the following members of the organistic fraternity:
J Gilbert Curtis (of Liverpool)
Walter Vale
Dr Jamhe H Reginald Dixon (of Lancaster)
C Kenneth Turner (Redhill)
Hustisson Stubington (Tewkesbury)
Hector Shallcross
Percy Saunders (Wakefield)
Archibald Farmer (Organ Music Soc)
Alfred Leonard Flay (Weymouth)
Francis Burgess (Gregorian Assn)
Harold Aubie Bennett (Doncaster/Rochester)
Malcolm Hallowes (Chester?)
Since Whitlock's own 'snapshot' albums were pinched from his widow's cottage in 1968 I have been trying to fill in some of the gaps over the past 30 odd years.
Many thanks
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Three more late arrivals, all of whom must have been attending to their tuning rounds for Comptons:
From Eire, Mr and Mrs O'Phone and their Welsh son Di
Two lads fresh from the West London Synagogue: Lew Minous Stop-Control and Sol O'Cello
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When i first saw your post I though you meant Aphrahamian!
R
Yes, I thought that too! I once spent a very interesting hour or so chez Aprahamian in the company of my dear friend Gerco Schaap. One wonders what has become of all the Organ Music Society papers, posters and other documentation which Felix had hoarded since the 1930s? Amazing to think that FA's House in Muswell Hill had played host to Poulenc and that Elgar's 'Nimrod', Augustus Jaeger, had lived nearby.
Malcolm Riley
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Can anyone help in trying to trace a photo of this esteemed gentleman? He was organist for many years at Tewkesbury Abbey and before that at Presteigne. Apart from his wonderful name, and his extensive organo-muso-journalism he seems to have sunk without trace. I have two unpublished letters that Whitlock sent him during the War. They met a few times and PW refered to him (in correspondence with Leslie Barnard) as 'Stubby'.
On another tack, I would be grateful to hear of any unpublished organ compositions by Herbert Murrill that board members might know about. This is Murrill's centenary year. I have the very few pieces published by Oxford and the Mag and Nunc, of course, but wonder whether other bits and pieces might lurk out there somewhere. In his youth he was quite active as an organist in London and at Oxford.
Malcolm Riley
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The New Oxford Book of Carols has it that the version for voice and piano was Warlock's last composition - so, the other way round. The original was published in the Telegraph as a facsimile of Warlock's hand-written score, with diamond noteheads; also reproduced in Music and Letters Vol 45 No 4 (Oct 1964), p334.
Paul
The voice and organ version of Bethlehem Down was published by Boosey and Hawkes and dedicated to Arnold Dowbiggin. It doesn't really fit on either the organ or the piano - "too many notes, Mr Heseltine"), but it can be adapted after a fashion. The important thing is to keep it at a slow tempo. I included it in our end of term carols (on a freezing winter morning in the local parish church) with 750 spotty teenagers apparently transfixed. Either that or the cold had temporarily fozen their collective fidgeting/chatting faculties! B Down is a masterpiece.
Malcolm Riley
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Yes Mr. Riley, I quite agree. I was there in August, and the place is in a very sorry state indeed. As to the organ, it WAS played by my colleague, so it is up and running somewhere!!
It may interest you to know I have a recording of Robert Ashfield playing Handel's Occaisional overture from 1973. You may like this for your archive? It's just the second movement. It may also interest you to know that RA did a recital at Rochester Cathedral one sunday evening at 6, this would be around the early 70s also, and during this he played the following
Whitlock-Antiphon
An old friend recorded this all on a reel to reel, but he died yonks ago, and the tape was lost anyway. (a great pity). Most intriquing is that I well recall Dr. Ashfield telling me point blank what the Whitlock piece was, ("Antiphon by Percy Whitlock") in the same week. I again questioned him a few years ago, as I have never found the piece or heard of it since, but he could not recall it at all. I mention this to you, as it may have been a MS copy, unpublished obviously. What I can tell you is that it was a "ABA" piece, about 3 minutes or so, with "echo" effects (swell/great) in 4/4. I hear it in my head in D, and it closed with a typical Whitlock cadence, like the Toccata.
R
Whitlock's Antiphon sounds most intriguing. I'm surprised that Doc Ashfield didn't mention it to me on the couple of occasions that we met. Ah well. Was the piece in a slow tempo? The only candidate I can think of is an ADAGIO, D major, 4/4, slow (obviously) which was found in MS in the loft at Rochester by George Jessup (an erstwhile Hylton Stewart and Whitlock pupil) in 1930, shortly before PW's departure to the healthier climes of Bournemouth. George allowed the Whitlock Trust to have a photocopy and it was eventually published by Banks in the '90s. However, the ending is rather unlike the Plymouth Suite Toccata, so that might be the wrong piece! I also hear rumours of an unpublished piece by Norman Cocker, composed for Whitlock.
I have amateur mono reel-to-reel recordings of all of Ashfield's Rochester Choral Society concerts from the late '50s onwards including a rather exciting Gerontius from 1959. Also Joe Levett and Harold A Bennett playing live in solo recitals in 1956 and 1957 respectively.
Malcolm Riley
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I have just driven past the URC church in Blackheath and have noticed it is up for sale, I have never been able to get into the church to see the organ and cannot find it on NPOR. All I know is that it is or was a small 3 manual formerly from a private residence, does anyone have details of this instrument? I fear it could well be another candidate for Ebay.
I wonder (as I wander) whether this might have any connection to the organ formerly owned by Percy Whitlock? In 1938 he bought a large 3 man from a retired tea-planter, Edmund Haythorne, for £50 and spent the next 5 or 6 years trying to rebuild it in his cottage on Wimborne Road in Bournemouth. He never succeeded in making it play, though, and eventually sold it to Alan Hickling in 1945. Hickling installed the instrument in Long Lane Methodist Church, near Quinton, Blackheath, West Midlands. Would this match the location of the URC church you drove past?
If it is for sale maybe it should be spared the demolitioner's ball and preserved in a safer place? Whitlock's organ - originally assembled in Calcutta - incorporated pipework by Fonseca, Hope-Jones, Ingram, Gray and Davidson and Willis.
Malcolm Riley
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<groan!>
I agree that Andrew's Toccata is a splendid piece: I love it!. I like his story about John Scott practicing it in York Minster in readiness for his summer recital with the composer in attendance. "As the pedal tune went rolling round the nave, I overheard a Yorkshire woman remark, in broad West Riding dialect, 'By gum, Christmas gets earlier iv'ry years!'"
Andrew has also composed a stunningly good Passacaglia for the Francis Jackson 90th Birthday anniversary volume (Fanfare for Francis published by Banks Music Publications). It needs a hefty instrument and a spacious acoustic but is well worth learning the notes.
Malcolm Riley
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It would help us, if we knew where this new home is....
In the meantime, could it resemble to this:
http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/5519/greenorgelck0.jpg
Pierre
If I can add my tuppenthworth, the image from imageshack.us does look remarkably like the Chatham organ, I have 2 photos of it in its original setting, one of which, by George Jessup, is reproduced in my 'Percy Whitlock - Organist and Composer' book (2nd edition, Sessions of York, 2003). According to my notes the organ was sold to the National Museum in Nurnberg, Germany in 1978 and restored by Hans Peter Mebold. I also have several recordings of the organ, broadcasts, mostly, made by the BBC in 1946 and after, featuring the church choir, local RSCM groups etc accompanied by James 'Joe' Levett. I rescued Levett's complete audio archive shortly prior to his move into an old folks' home. Otherwise it was destined for the skip! St Mary's Church is in a sorry state nowadays. There were several vagrants sleeping in its grounds when I passed by earlier this year. What a change from its heyday in the 1920s, '30s and '40s.
Malcolm Riley
Recitals
in General discussion
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Having not attended an Ally Pally event before my wife and I weren't sure what to expect. The audience was certainly most appreciative. I should guess that there were 150+ in attendance. The PA system worked quite well though it would help if those using the mic held it to their mouths and not by their chests! Francis (introduced simply as 'the player') included his beautiful and serenely autumnal Sixth Sonata, commissioned by Graham Barber for performance at St Bart's, Armley and dedicated to the memory of the sorely-missed Geoffrey de Coup Crank. Another gem was Henry Smart's Andante in F, which out-Mendelssohned Mendelssohn rather well. The video screens were a boon and the camerawork nicely focused and pertinent.
Priscilla Jackson was in attendance (with grandson Sam, just graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge). She was concerned that the large number of recitals Francis was due to give this season (12 or 14, was it?) was preventing him from composing! However, he was about to give the premiere of a new piece, Reverie, based on an improvisational theme composed by Ravel for Dupre. As Nessa (of Gavin and Stacey fame) would say - "lush"!
The Doctor's artistry and stamina are simply staggering. He is 92 in October!
MKR