Jeremy Jones

I could not agree more. What we need more of today is organ builders with the courage of their convictions to produce honest instruments that do not even begin to attempt to be all things to all men. Where are the instruments being produced today where, with some certainty just using your ears you can say who built the organ? I doubt you would need more than the fingers on one hand to count them. Which is why I believe the unveiling of Kenneth Tickell's Worcester Cathedral organ in 2008 will be a watershed moment for UK organ building. We have all been criticising the recent trend of awarding major new builds in this country to overseas builders. Worcester could well tell us whether this has been such a misguided trend by the much maligned consultants (we all know who they are...).

Well, why not start with poorly built instruments. I for one am never shy of banging the British drum, but even this one-eyed Englishman would admit that we have produced our fair share of poorly built and/or finished organs in recent years. There is also, however, the matter of the instrument's suitability for the building it is to be housed in. One of the problems with 'continental' inspired organs, whether in an Oxbridge chapel or an English cathedral (Gloucester), is that they are not ideally suited to accompanying the daily choral services. A sweeping statement, maybe, but neo-classical instruments have tended to lack the subtlety in voicing needed, or in larger instruments, such 'anachronisms' as a Tuba to help lead a congregation or provide a fitting climax to works such as Howells' Collegium Regale Jubilate.

Pierre's animosity towards the replacement of the current Worcester box of whistles is nigh on legendary, but I do hope his bastardisation of the name of the builder of the new organ - Kenneth Tickell - was not intentional. We all enjoy being armchair critics of specifications, but as I think John Mander has gently suggested on this discussion board before, the proof really is in how the finished product sounds in situ.

I must admit that the arrival on the doormat of OR every 3 months always cheered me up, with the expectation of a few hours happily devouring it from cover to cover. However, the last 2 editions have left me feeling decidedly unsatisfied, with 'nothing' covers that would have looked just at home on the front of Country Life. Maybe the new editor, who is quite open about the fact that she is O.D. free, is afraid her publication might be chosen to lampooned in the missing words round of Have I Got News For You! Perhaps OR would have been better advised to have undergone an evolutionary change rather than a revolutionary one. Themes in a magazine are fine when it is published at least once a month, but in a quarterly you run the risk of alieniating a proportion of your readership if they don't like or have an interest in the history of Coventry and Britten's War Requiem. My subscription is now up for renewal, and I guess I'll just have to swallow my reservations for now, pay up and then see how the next issue turns out in February.

While surfing the BBC Radio 3 website, I found out that the BBC and RCO are organising a celebration of Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor BWV 565 on Sunday 18 December, as part of Radio 3's "A Bach Christmas". Since the BBC appeared to have given up on broadcasting organ music except in the middle of the night, this is a bit of a turn up. They are trying to get as many organists as possible across the UK to play the work on the Sunday at a service or recital. Wayne Marshall is playing it live on Radio 3 at 1.30 pm on the Klais organ at St John's, Smith Square, London, as part of a wider programme about the work. More info can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/bach/bachtfc.shtml

Unless Colin is having a laugh, I think this is a deplorable suggestion. Start going down this particular road and you will end up with the machines taking over the organ loft. Fast forward 50 years, and you would find real, flesh and blood, organists had been consigned to oblivion, only finding an outlet for their talents on discussion boards such as this, where they would still be banging on about that time in the late noughties when Worcester Cathedral had the bravery/temerity (delete as appropriate) to chuck out the old organ and start afresh. No! No!! No!!!

What makes a good recital? Like trying to nail jelly to the wall, it's a tricky one. Messiaen in small doses in a recital can be really memorable. I recall a Sunday afternoon recital at Westminster Cathedral which featured excerpts from La Nativite du Seigneur. Can't remember the player, but was bored rigid until "Di parmi nous" which, on that organ, just blew me away! Another Messiaen moment was hearing a ground shaking Appartion de l'eglise eternelle at King's. But complete Messiaen works - forget it. Good programming is vital, and should not be compromised. I attended a memorable almost all-French recital Colin Walsh gave at Westminster Abbey during the Martin Neary years. It had concluded with the last movement of Vierne's Symphonie VI that, with its jazzy syncopations, had the audience almost dancing out of the Abbey. Note the "almost-all French" comment. In his introduction, Dreary self-deprecatingly recalled how after Colin Walsh had submitted an all-French programme for the recital, he had rung the Lincoln organist to tell him, "Oh, but we must have some Bach!" Christopher Herrick's series of Organ Fireworks and Organ Dreams recordings is, of course, a great marketing gimmick, even though the overall listening experience of each series is somewhat relenting.

I think one can get too worked up about the use of the RAH organ as a solo instrument, when this is only a very small part of what it is there for. Its primary roles is surely to accompany massed and not so massed choirs, sometimes in tandem with an orchestra or brass band. And in this function, if nothing else, it surely excels, as I can speak from experience. At one time I was a member of the London Symphony Chorus, and the bread and butter of our work was in the Barbican Hall, somehow squashed in usually behind the LSO. If an organ was called for in the work we were performing, a digital organ would be wheeled on with a few speakers scattered about. This was all but useless for providing the chorus with any support. Occasional forays to venues such as the Festival Hall or RAH were always welcome, not least because they both possess such good concert organs, which integrate well with the orchestra and, being situated immediately behind the chorus, provide the singers with some oftenj badly needed support which the orchestra in front cannot. I still remember with awe a concert at the RAH which we opened with Parry's Blest Pair of Sirens. The work ends with a gradual crescendo leading to a blazing climax, and having the floor shaking RAH organ powering away behind us gave such a feeling of confidence that you just don't get at somewhere like the Barbican. This is not something to be sniffed at, as the LSO chorus like most that appear at the RAH, are amateur choirs where confidence is everything. By all means discuss to your hearts content the merits or otherwise of the RAH organ and DGWs recent recital, and whether this or that tuba and octave coupler was used. Just don't forget the reality of what this instruments daily bread and butter is. Jeremy Jones London

Well, 23 June seems aeons ago, but yes, I had found DGWs recording of 'Ad nos' to be over-registered. As Will said about the concert, which unfortunately I was unable to attend due to a bout of vertigo and deafness in one ear (don't ask!), it seemed that DGW wanted to show off every stop on the organ, which is all very well, but perhaps not very satisfying from a musical standpoint. Regrettably, my fears about DGWs ability to play on such a large instrument, based upon recent recitals of hers that I have attended at Armley and Bridgewater Hall, would appear to be born out by some of the post-concert comments. You get the best of DGW, which is very good indeed, when she is playing music from the Baroque or Classical repertoire, on small to medium sized mechanical action instruments. By the way, some things in the RAH do shake when the organ is at full tilt. If you stand on the pavement close to the old RCO building during the daytime when full organ is being played, you can see the RAH windows shaking! Jeremy Jones London

With contracts for new builds at St Albans and Worcester recently going to Manders and Tickell respectively, rather than to the usual suspects from mainland Europe - Marcussen, Rieger, Klais, Goll (oh, golly, I forgot that one's been cancelled!) - I am quitely confident that we may just have turned the corner in time and realised what great organ builders we have here in the UK. As is often the case here, we never take anyone seriously until they've conquered the rest of the world. And with Manders, Harrisons and other UK firms order books having in recent years been filled with significant instruments for the overseas market, it's not before time.

Well, I certainly touched a nerve or two here! I stand by much of what I said in my posting, and should add that my conclusions were not based on ignorance of the music scene outside London. I am not some one-eyed Londoner who imagines civilisation ceases to exist beyond the M25, as in the past year I have attended concerts or organ recitals in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Edinburgh, Lincoln, Leicester, Birmingham, York and Glasgow. Don't forget that my assertion about the UK being a cultural wasteland outside London did carry the rider: "much". The music scene in Manchester, in particular, has drawn me like a moth frequently to hear the Halle under Mark Elder and the BBC Philharmonic under Noseda and Sinaisky, particularly in choral music which seems to have a tradition of choral concerts that has been lacking in London in recent years. I've heard the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union give a superb performance of the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony at Usher Hall, Sinaisky conduct a surprisingly good Gerontius and Noseda a demonic Verdi Requiem in Manchester with the BBC Phil, and listened in awe to the Liverpool Cathedral organ in recitals by Malcolm Archer and Andrew Nethsingha. However, the fact remains that most of the time if you want to hear the best artists - I'm going this weekend, for example, to the Barbican to hear Valery Gergiev conduct the London Symphony Orchestra on consecutive nights in Shostakovich's 7th and 8th symphonies - you really have to come to London. Call me a musical snob if you like, but I want to hear the best of the best, not the best of the rest, as is all too often the case out in the sticks (damn, I've done it again!) . Jeremy Jones London

Pierre is right - the 3 Choirs Festival is something to cherish - but it does only fill up 1 week of the year. What about the other 51? JJ

To be honest I'm not sure Simon Rattle is quite the type of role model nowadays to show how it should be done. Yes, he was a great catalyst for change in Birmingham, but that was 20 years ago. But today I get the impression he looks on the UK music scene with some distaste, like he stepped on something nasty on the pavement. Rattle's comittment to Birmingham is so great that, bar returning last year to complete his set of Mahler symphonies for EMI, he is all but invisible. He has such high regard for Birmingham and its orchestra that he now shuns them altogether. As for the decision of the RCO to relocate to Birmingham, I am not surprised this come to nothing. The drive to relocate organisations like the RCO from London to the regions is based on idealism, rather than hard-headed thinking. Ideally, relocating the Royal Armouries to Leeds was a splendid idea. It ticked all the right politically correct boxes but failed to consider whether there was actually a big enough customer base. There wasn't, and it bombed. The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland. Earlier this year I travelled to Glasgow to hear Mariss Jansons conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (unusually they were not appearing in London). You would expect that the combination of one of the world's finest conductors and orchestras would be a sell out, given the usual fare of Scottish orchestra with conductors nobody's ever heard of. But no, to my embarrassment, Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall was less than half full. In London, the larger capacity Royal Festival Hall would have been packed. No, the people must come to the mountain, not the other way round. The RCO's place is in London, and anyone who thinks otherwise, should get real. Jeremy Jones London

I know, London is just such a terrible place. We've got the Proms, the RAH organ, the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Opera and Royal Ballet, ENO, Sadlers Wells, Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral, Southwark Cathedral (and their superb choirs and organs), the National Theatre, Old Vic, huge variety of musicals and plays, Wigmore Hall, South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre.... and of course Mander Organs. Terrible place, this London. Jeremy Jones London

Sales of commercial organ CDs should take into account the overseas market, but UK record companies should not be making that the driving force behind making recordings. And to be honest, there are already more than enough recordings out there of Vierne, Franck or Widor on the great Cavaille-Coll organs in Rouen, Caen, Toulouse and Paris and Reger or Liszt on German organs at Merseberg, Cologne, Ingolstadt, Leipzig etc made by French and German record labels. I see no reason why a series on the Great French Romantics, played by a first class organist on the Grand Organ of Westminster Cathedral couldn't be a a commercial bestseller. This organ, one of our greatest instruments, is woefully under-recorded. Reger from Norwich has already been done, as has Karg-Elert (Paul Derrett on Amphion) to wonderful effect. Of course, Bach at St George's Hall, Liverpool is a non-starter. It's simply a question of putting the right organ with the right repertoire and the right player. Jeremy Jones London

My perspective on organ recitals comes from being a potential audience member, although I do appreciate something of what it is like to give a recital, having once, and only once, occupied the hot seat, sweaty palms and all. As a Londoner, I tend to agree with Paul Derrett that we are rather spoiled, being able on any given Sunday to walk into St Paul's or Westminster Cathedrals and Westminster Abbey and hear a superb organ being put through its paces, sometimes by Paul, a frequent visitor to the smoke! That being said, the quality of these free recitals is somewhat varied. A useful tip is to go when a member of the home team, or Paul, are playing. These are tricky instruments and acoustics for the newcomer to conquer. Being choosy about who to go and hear, whatever the venue, is also advisable. As has already been said, it's not the speed of the playing that's important, though it does have a bearing. What is often not recognised is that eminent and not so eminent Cathedral organists do not always make the best recitalists. The art of accompanying a choir does not necessarily translate into the most effective recitalist. What I am trying to say, in the nicest possible way, is that some of them are plodders. Now going back to All Souls, yes it is very welcome that such a series is being put on, and with such (ahem) eminent recitalists. But being a Nine to Fiver for one, I am simply not willing to stay late at work and then turn up and pay the entrance fee before finding out what's on the programme. This does matter! We all have our likes and dislikes, and I for one am not prepared to turn up blind not knowing what is going to be played. Of course there are other imponderables to consider. All Souls recitals are on Monday nights, the third rail of evenings out in London - touch it, and you die. Then there are things which no one can plan for, such as the weather. Martin Stacey puts on a great series of recitals at St Dominics Priory, Belsize Park. However, I haven't been back since the time I and a small band of hardy souls experienced the onset of hypothermia whilst listening to Martin working up a sweat putting the Father Willis through its paces in some lovely Vierne from the 24 Pieces de Fantaisie. Jeremy Jones London

Unless my ears have been deceiving me, I had always thought the Swell was on the left hand side of the instrument, i.e. the liturgical South side, something the picture below tends to substantiate. Jeremy Jones London

This should do the trick: http://www.grago.org/organs/doc/st_mark.htm Jeremy Jones London

Guys, there's some really interesting seat of the pants thinking going on here. But since most people gave up on the Worcester dimension aeons ago, as the discussion had well and truly run its course, most people like me had been ignoring this discussion, thinking a dead horse was being flogged. There's some great stuff here, but open it in a new topic so the rest can join in the fun. or merely observe from a safe distance. Many thanks.

I am truly grateful to heva for the Dutch to English translation, or as Pierre says, Dank U! What Paul Derrett says about Priory Records re-issuing a lot lately is spot on, although you wont hear me complaining about them re-releasing the Michael Woodward archive. That being said, it would be nice to see more bona fide new organ recordings, preferably of instruments in the UK and not the usual suspects.

I think mobility of the audience is indeed the key factor here, although speaking for myself, this by train rather than car. It does make sense for a recitalist to repeat the same programme, or aspects of it, at different venues, but with some recitalists you do need to be careful as their repertoire can be quite small. Funnily enough, I think this is more of a problem with concert organists, e.g. Gillian Weir, Simon Preston, Thomas Trotter, Jane Parker-Smith. With cathedral organists, and by this I mean the Assistant or Sub-Organist (the real organist, if you may), they need to have a much larger repertoire on the go at any one time. As ever, it is always best to check what is on the programme before travelling long distances, though that can be easier said than done, when you have a greater chance of uncovering state secrets than what's being played at a recital. Jeremy Jones London

Amen to that. Jeremy Jones London

The URL to the Dutch website is: http://home.wanadoo.nl/akenfens/brit2000/b...st/n1abbey.html

My grumble about the ubiquitous Dame GW giving the RAH recital in October notwithstanding, I cannot pass this opportunity to go and hear the old dear (the RAH organ) in the flesh. So..... I have heard that the best place to hear the organ in all its splendour and majesty is in the Circle opposite the organ, i.e. at the back of the hall. Is this right? Grateful for some advice from those in the know. Many thanks.

Priory have just re-issued on CD a 1987 recording of David Patrick playing the Downes/Walker organ in Buckfast Abbey. Uncharacteristically, and very remiss too, the minimal notes include nothing about the organ. The NPOR isn't much help either, the last survey dating back to the 1970s and even then not very sure of itself and a Google search on the web hasn't come up with anything either, except for something written in Dutch. If anyone knows anything about this instrument, that would be mightily helpful, not to mention interesting! Many thanks.