Home
History
Specification
Mechanism
Recordings
Events
Funding
Links
Feedback

The Binns organ in the Albert Hall, Nottingham, UK

Events 2009

Recital series 2009

Sunday 24th May 2009

John Keys - Nottingham

Handel: Suite from the Royal Fireworks Music
Pucell: Voluntary on the Old 100th
Mendelssohn: Prelude and Fugue in C minor
Wagner: The Ride Of The Valkyries and Sigfried’s Funeral March
Ketelbèy: In A Monastery Garden and In A Persian Market
Karg-Elert: Symphonic Canzona nr 3 op 85

This year John Keys celebrates twenty-five years as organist and choirmaster at St Mary’s Nottingham, and Nottingham’s Albert Hall celebrates a hundred years since its rebuilding after a fire. Two good excuses for a celebration, and John Keys has chosen a programme which largely reflects the music the Binns organ was designed to play. The transcription of Handel’s Royal Fireworks Music is followed by a salute to birthday boy Henry Purcell, then other birthday boy Mendelssohn whose prelude and Fugue in C minor remind us that their composer did much to acquaint us in England with the music of J S Bach.

Edwin Lemare gave one of the first recitals on the Albert Hall organ, and we are going to hear his transcription of The Ride of the Valkyries, followed by John Keys’s own account of Siegfried’s Funeral March. Two “lollipops” (as Sir Thomas Beecham would call them) by Albert W Ketelbèy take us to a wonderful piece by Karg-Elert. Movements titled Fugue, Canzona and Epilogue sound innocent enough, but the surprise is in the Epilogue where, after all the sonorities of the Romantic organ that Karg-Elert can throw at us, the organist is joined by a solo violin and female chorus whose task is quite simply to take us to heaven.

Darius Battiwalla - London

Mendelssohn: Overture to “St Paul”
Bach-Vivaldi: Concerto in A minor BWV 593
Vierne: Clair de Lune, Naïades, Toccata
Grainger: Blithe Bells, Shepherd’s Hey
Whitlock: Grave-Allegro, Scherzetto (Sonata in C minor)
Lemare: Concert fantasia on “Hanover”

Darius Battiwalla continues our homage to Mendelssohn with an overture to one of his oratorios. Bach’s well-known transcription of a Vivaldi concerto for two violins is followed by Vierne in three contrasting moods: heavenly, frivolous and angry. Was Percy Grainger really as crazy as Ken Russell portrayed him in his film about Delius? Probably. Here he tests his theory that “Sheep May Safely Graze” was indeed based on the sound of sheep bells, and then gives us one of his romps with Shepherd’s Hey. The big Elgarian sounds of the first movement of Whitlock’s Sonata are followed by its lighthearted Scherzetto, and we end with the archetypal English romantic organist Edwin Lemare and his fantasia on the hymntune we know as “O worship the King”.

Sunday 19th July 2009

Adam Brakel - USA, Oundle Award Winner

Sunday 9th August 2009

David Butterworth - Nottingham

Sunday 30th August 2009

James Taylor - Cork

Sunday 27th September 2009

Richard Hills - London

Sunday 25th October 2009

John Scott - New York

Events in previous years

• Events in 2008
• Events in 2007
• Events in 2006
• Events in 2005
• Events in 2004
• Events in 2003

Sponsors

If you would like to sponsor a Recital, please contact the Chair, Hilary Silvester, for further details. Her email address is:
hilary at binns dot info

EMOR mailing list

If you are interested in receiving email notification of organ recitals in the East Midlands, then why not subscribe to EMOR? "East Midlands Organ Recitals" is a mailing list which will send you occasional emails containing details of recitals in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. To join, simply send an email to emor-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.