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The Binns organ in the Albert Hall, Nottingham, UK

Events 2010

Recital series 2010

All recitals take place on Sunday afternoons at 2.45pm. There is normally (unless otherwise stated) a pre-concert talk with the soloist at 2:15 in the Balmoral Room adjacent to the main hall. Lunch is available at the Albert Hall prior to the concert (pre-booking is essential on 0115 950 0411) and light refreshments are served during the interval.

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE ANNIVERSARY RECITAL ON 7 NOVEMBER, WHEN AN ADMISSION CHARGE WILL BE PAYABLE, admission is free to the recitals. A programme containing full details of the soloist and information about the pieces to be paid will be on sale at each recital price £1. N.B. at the anniversary recital the programme is free.

Sunday 9 May 2010

Jonathan Bunney

J S Bach; Prelude and Fugue in G BWV 550
Petr Eben: Ist movement from Two Invocations for trombone and organ
Klaas Bolt: Variations on “My God, whence shall I go”
Charles Ives: Variations on “America”
Louis Vierne: Symphonie 6 (complete)

J S Bach, “the master of us all” as Debussy called him, begins our 2010 recital series with the cheerful (and rarely heard) Prelude and Fugue in G BWV 550. Then it is in different mode entirely for Petr Eben’s challenging piece in which the organist is joined by trombonist Nigel Stark. Two hymtune variations follow, one by Klaas Bolt, onetime organist of St Bavo’s cathedral in Haarlem, and the other by Charles Ives. He was thinking of “My Country, ’tis of Thee” but we associate the tune with different words. Prepare to be amused!

In the second half we have a rare complete performance of a Vierne symphony: the sixth, written at a happy period in Vierne’s life and ending with a distinctly jolly Final.

Sunday 6 June 2010

David Butterworth

Naji Hakim: Fanfare for Nottingham
J S Bach: Prelude and Fugue in E minor BWV 548 (The Wedge)
J P Sweelinck: Variations on “Mein junges Leben hat ein End”
Joseph Callaerts: Toccata in E minor
Jean Langlais: Fête
Julius Reubke: Sonata on the 94th Psalm

Binns organ curator David Butterworth begins with a world première, Naji Hakim’s Fanfare for Nottingham, specially commissioned to celebrate the centenary of the organ. This is followed by one of Bach’s monumental preludes and fugues, which itself gives place to Sweelinck’s intimate set of variations. The first half ends with the Belgian composer Joseph Callaerts’s enjoyable Toccata.

Equally enjoyable is Langlais’s Fête, celebrating both the Liberation of Paris and Langlais’s appointment as organist of Ste-Clotilde. Finally comes a piece for which David is renowned, Reubke’s monumental sonata based on the stormy 94th psalm.

Sunday 27 June 2010

David Gammie

John E West: Allegro maestoso (Sonata in D minor)
Louis Spohr: Andante with variations (Nocturne for wind ensemble)
Alexandre Guilmant: Caprice
Robert Schumann: Study in A flat and two fugues on BACH
Norman Cocker: Tuba Tune
Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings
Henri Mulet: Rosace from Esquisses Byzantines
Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Sonatina

David Gammie’s connection with the Albert Hall dates from 1983 when he was co-producer for Michael Overbury’s pioneering LP on the instrument. Sunday by Sunday he presides at an organ of comparable age and size at the church of the Sacred Heart Wimbledon, and he is often encountered as a programme-note writer for organ recitals and CDs. His Albert Hall programme explores many attractive byways, starting with a sort of English Guilmant from John E West, known to many as an assiduous arranger. An equally assiduous arranger was W T Best, whose transcription of part of Spohr’s Nocturne is an appropriate choice for an instrument designed as much for such arrangements as it was for original organ music. After some “capricious” Guilmant we salute one of this year’s “birthday boys”, Robert Schumann with his homage to J S Bach.

Norman Cocker’s popular Tuba Tune comes from the pen of a composer equally at home in the cloistered calm of Manchester Cathedral or the livelier surroundings of that city’s Gaumont cinema. Barber’s much-loved Adagio fro Strings comes in organ guise, then we hear a picture in sound of the stained glass in the basilica of Sacre-Coeur. Finally comes Karg-Elert’s Sonatina, a large-scale work despite its title: tuneful, attractive in a variety of ways, and culminating in the usual glorious Karg-Elert blaze.

Sunday 1st August 2010

David Newsholme

J S Bach: Prelude and Fugue in E flat BWV 552
Bjarne Sløgedal: Variations on a Norwegian folktune
Maurice Duruflé: Suite pour orgue
Tarik O’Regan: Colimaçon
Noel Rawsthorne: Prelude on the Londonderry Air
Billy Mayerl: Marigold
Healey Willan: Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue

Bach is saluted with his “St Anne” prelude and fugue, but then it’s 20th century all the way. Sløgedal’s genial variations are followed by Duruflé’s Suite, which culminates in his famous Toccata. Contemporary composer Tarik O’Regan challenges our ears with some intriguing rhythms but then come two familiar tunes, the Irish tune from County Derry “dished up” as Percy Grainger would say, and then an inter-war favourite, Marigold. All this prepares us for the amazing final piece, Healey Willan’s Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue.

Sunday 5th September 2010

Mark Williams

J S Bach: Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C BWV 564
Richard Wagner: Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhaüser
William Byrd: Fantasia in C
César Franck: Cantabile
Louis Vierne: Final from Symphonie 1
G F Handel: Organ Concerto in G minor op 4 nr 1
Ad Wammes: Miroir
Herbert Howells: Psalm Prelude set 1 nr 1
Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Valse Mignonne
William Harris: A Fancy
Edward Elgar: Imperial March

That father of English music William Byrd was for nine years organist of Lincoln Cathedral. Not the only local connection in this recital: the Pilgrim’s Chorus has been transcribed by Edwin Lemare, who gave a recital on “The New City Organ” at the Albert Hall in October 1910. After due homage to Bach and Handel we cross the Channel for Franck’s serene Cantabile and Vierne’s most famous symphonic movement, plus the Dutchman Ad Wammes’s now-familiar piece Miroir and Karg-E;lert’s outrageous waltz. The English establishment is well represented by Sir William Harris’s delightful tribute to Percy Whitlock, and then two men from Three Choirs Festival country: from Gloucester Herbert Howells, hailed as the father of modern cathedral music, plus Elgar’s first great success, the march he wrote to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Sunday 26 September 2010

Donald MacKenzie

L A J Lefébure-Wely: Offertoire in B flat
Emile Waldteufel: Waltz, España
André Messager: Potpourri from Véronique
Josef Strauss: Feuerfest
Jacques Offenbach: Overture, Orpheus in the Underworld
Arr MacKenzie: Songs of Paris
Lerner & Lowe: Selection from Gigi
Johan Strauss I: Champagner-Galoppe
And other surprise items

Donald MacKenzie makes a welcome return to Nottingham from the Odeon Leicester Square, where he is House Organist. Like many of our recitalists he has homed in on the French connection, though in his case he has found their lighter side. “Offertoire” sounds religious, but with Lefébure-Wely you never know. He was of course the Offenbach of the organ loft, so you can compare the two today. I have got the right composer for España: Waldteufel appropriated Chabrier’s rhapsody of the same name and arranged it as a waltz. André Messager was assistant to Widor at Saint-Sulpice, where the two organists could be very silly together during High Mass. Messager composed a mass with his friend Fauré, whose contributions survive as his chaste Messe Basse; Messager’s parts of that mass are quite different, more like Véronique in fact (and I hope you went to see the wonderful production last summer in Buxton). There are popular items from nearer our own time, and we musn’t forget the Strausses, two of them. Johann Strauss the elder once performed in Nottingham.

Sunday 7 November 2010

Aureum Han

C V Stanford: Fantasia and Toccata
Felix Mendelssohn: Sonata III
J S Bach: Concerto in A minor after Vivaldi
Pierre Cochereau: Berceuse à la mémoire de Louis Vierne
Thomas Heywood: Humoresque for a Pedal Trombone
C M von Weber: Overture to Oberon
Louis Vierne: Clair de Lune; Naïades; Carillon de Westminster

Aureum Han makes a welcome return visit to give our Anniversary Recital, held to commemorate the re-opening of the Albert Hall organ by Thomas Trotter in autumn 1993. This recital is also the Jim Lodge Recital, commemorating a dear friend to many of us and a stalwart supporter of the Binns Organ Recitals.

A Weber transcription is appropriate on this organ of course. But Bach started it, with his transcriptions of Vivaldi string concertos for his young pupil Prince Johann Ernst. Mention of Oberon immediately makes you think of Mendelssohn: but this is the more mature English Mendelssohn, starting a line of serious organ playing that reached to Stanford’s highly important Fantasia and Toccata. Then it’s those Frenchmen again. Pierre Cochereau left many recorded improvisations but few actual compositions; one of them salutes his revered Notre-Dame predecessor Louis Vierne who is heard in three contrasted works: Clair de Lune, one of the loveliest pieces in the repertoire: the scintillating Naïades, and the famous Carillon de Westminster inspired by his 1924 visit to the new organ in Westminster Cathedral (he came to Nottingham the following year, during the tour which inspired Les Cloches de Hinckley). Fun and frolic is to be had from one of Australia’s most highly regarded concert organists, whose Humoresque for a Pedal Trombone (a loud bass stop on the organ) depends for its impact on the “shenanigans” as one critic put it of that particular stop, whose potential is demonstrated in every conceivable way.

Events in previous years

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.

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