Jeremy Jones

What utter cheek! They should be forced to sit through Livre du Saint-Sacrement and then told: "NOW you can ask your question...."

I was never very good at maths at school, but the neo-classical spec that started this off had 21 stops and the Douglas instrument, which apparently is double the size, has 22!

I'm afraid this type of instrument leaves me cold. I would much rather go with something altogether more English such as the new Harrison & Harrison organ for St George's Church, Isle of Man: http://www.harrison-organs.co.uk/douglas.html The west end position would be ideal, of course, rather than buried in the chancel, and housed in a case made of wood from a sustainable source to a contemporary but not brutalist design.

Not with the ticket prices the RAH and Raymond Gubbay are charging. I'll wait a month for the Simon Preston recital on 30 June where top price tickets are £15.

Gerard Brook's article in the latest edition of Organists Review about how to play a Cavaille-Coll organ is very telling. The ventil system and the way the organist can use them on each manual to gradully increase the power is fascinating, but also somewhat worrying, when I thought organists had enough to worry about with manual, pedals, stops, swell pedals, pistons etc.

Way to go OR, daring to actually put a picture of some organ pipes on the front cover!

The Times reported on this a few weeks ago, and there has been a steady stream of Letters to the Editor ever since. One of the newspapers' younger columnists, Caitlin Moran, commented on this contraption in her column last week. She concluded that "... in an age in which anyone with a half-decent laptop can recreate the Ring Cycle, it does seem odd for any audience to rely on cranking up an instrument that’s half-bagpipe, half-rotovator." Sing hallelujah for the C of E karaoke machine: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10...2156865,00.html

I recently acquired Martin Jean's recordings of the 6 Vierne Symphonies on the Skinner Organ in Woolsey Memorial Hall, Yale University. They are superbly done, but he sensibly doesn't try and make the instrument sound like a Cavaille-Coll. The sensible approach must surely be to take whatever instrument you are playing on its own terms, and not to try and make it into something it isnt.

There are some organists and choir masters who have remained in the same post for a considerable length of time. These include Paul Morgan (Exeter Cathedral), John Scott Whiteley (York Minster), Stephen Cleobury (King's, Cambridge), Stephen Darlington (Christchurch, Oxford), James Lancelot (Durham), Alan Thurlow (Chichester), Ian Tracey (Liverpool). A question that I have long mulled over without coming to any conclusions one way or the other is this. Is a lengthy tenure for an organist or choirmaster good or bad (i) for him and (ii) the institution where he works?

A few years ago one of our most eminent senior organists gave a recital of French Romantic works, principally Franck, on the organ at Westminster Abbey. It proved to be a bit of a stinker, really, principally because he tried to make this quintessentially English organ sound like a Cavaille-Coll. The Abbey organ has some good continental sounding stops on the Choir courtesy of the Simon Preston inspired rebuild in 1982, and of course the battery of Bombarde reeds in the North Triforium, added in 1987, but otherwise the tutti is as English as you get. My question is this: what should an organist do in such a situation where French Romantic music has been programmed on an echt-English instrument. Should you even try to come up with some authentic sounding registrations?

No worries as Hell is covered. As well as HPC, my weekend organ crawl oop north takes in the City Hell in Hall to hear Carol Williams and to Nottingham on Sunday to hear Daniel Cook put the Albert Hall Binns through its paces. By eck, it'll be good to get back to the smoke after that triumvirate.

I'm going to Halifax on Saturday night to hear James Lancelot play the Harrison at HPC. Any recommendations for post-recital grub in Halifax? What do they eat in that part of the world? Pies?

No doubt M. Pincemaille was right in the registrations he changed during your recital, but I would have found it infuriating. There is, after all, more than one way to skin a cat.....

I'm in the process of trying to find second-hand copies of SPs 1960s Decca LPs from Westminster Abbey, Colston Hall, Hull City Hall, King's and then getting them transferred to CD. Waiting for some enterprising record label to licence them ......

I've got the Priory CD of Adrian Lucas playing the Portsmouth organ, and it sounds a fine instrument. Bonnet's Variations de Concert on the CD comes across magnificently - I really must get down to Pompey one of these days. It must be an optical illusion but the old organ case looks from a distance on the CD cover like the face of a monkey with its eyes shut.

Paul Hale's recital at Bridlington on 29 July looks a good bet. The organ should have bedded in a bit by then, the sun will hopefully be shining down on Brid's beaches. All that stands between a weekend in North Yorkshire is the shutdown of the railways at weekends!

I suppose I'm being a bit of a curmudgeon when in fact I am a SP fan and will, nevertheless, be found at the RAH on 30 June. I just feel that Mendelssohn, Schumann, Karg-Elert and Schmidt is a bit too much for one recital, and on paper at least, it doesn't look like an enticing programme. Nonetheless, the Jongen is of course a fantastic work, and the Bolcom sounds interesting.

It says on the H&H website that the Great and Swell Organs and the console will be re-instated this year, followed by the central and right hand sections at a later date (whenever that might be, if ever?). Do they really mean to reinstate the Great and Swell this year, or do they mean 2007?

The programme for Simon Preston's 30 June recital at the RAH is: Felix Mendelssohn: Overture to the Oratorio "St Paul" (Op. 36) Robert Schumann: Six Fugues on the name BACH (Op. 60) Franz Schmidt: Toccata (1924) Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Valse Mignonne (Op.142, No.2) Joseph Jongen: Sonata Eroïca (Op. 94) William Bolcom: Free Fantasia on ‘O Zion, Haste’ and ‘How Firm a Foundation’ My heart sunk to my boots at the sight of the Schumann - didn't he play that at his RFH recital last year? On paper, at least, an underwhelming looking programme for such an occasion.

For me, the naughty but nice pieces would probably have to be the Lefebure-Wely Sorties in E flat and B flat. I know, I know, its music only fit for the playground, but I like them because they don't take themselves too seriously.

Of course, the real reason why subsequent King's DoMs have struggled with descants is that, unlike David Willcocks and Boris Ord, they weren't educated at Clifton College in Bristol.

Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace by Sebastian Temple is my own personal bete-noir. It is weakly constructed - it seems as if you start mid-verse - and just sounds a bit pathetic really. Can I also put in a personal request since we're on the subject for a mortorium on all descants to Christmas Hymns - Hark the Herald, O Come etc - that are arranged by anyone whose name isn't David Willcocks? Subsequent King's Directors of Music have made their own valiant attempts at arrangements, and all are to be congratulated on their endeavours. But DW is the daddy. Nuff said.

I recall one day during a piano lesson, my piano teacher sighed and said he wished I didn't play the piano as if it were an organ! On the way out afterwards, we bumped into my organ teacher who, upon hearing this, scowled and muttered that it was all very well, but he wished I would stop playing the organ as if it were a piano. Oh dear!

Is it just me, or has anyone else found that the very best organists for some reason don't make for good hymn players? Could it perhaps be a case of those that can, play, and those that can't, do hymns?

If only..... Aeolus currently doesn't have a distributor in the UK so their CDs are extremely hard to get hold of.