David Flood’s lunchtime organ recital in St Mary’s church in Rye yesterday, September 19, was, as we were promised at the start, ‘a feast’. Dr Flood, Canterbury Cathedral’s organist and master of choristers, is known world-wide for his musicianship and proved at the start a most persuasive and informative oral advocate of the music he was about to play.
He began with something very welcome while Big Ben is out of commission: Vierne’s Carillon de Westminster, based on the organ maker Willis’ erroneous communication to the composer of the note pattern of the iconic British clock. This he followed with two contrasting works of J.S.Bach, his C major Toccata, Adagio and Fugue and the choral prelude ‘Wachet Auf!’, the first the composer adopting a simple ‘modern’ style, said Dr Flood and the second, one of Bach’s most beautiful and beguiling creations.
Next came Hereford Cathedral organist Mr Sinclair’s organ transposition, completed with the composer’s approval, of Elgar’s noble fourth Pomp and Circumstance March, before the, to me, most revelatory and unexpected work of the concert: Mendelssohn’s fourth organ sonata with its extraordinary and mysterious contrasts arranged around two – two(!) – central slow movements.
The mood was lifted by a delightful Cantilene-Pastorale by Guilmant before Dr Flood gave us a never-to-become-hackneyed favourite to conclude. I was fortunate enough to attend an inner-city grammar school which had somehow managed to provide itself with a ‘proper’ organ, which the highly accomplished music master played frequently. Widor ‘s Toccata from his fifth organ symphony as we pupils didn’t call it has been a treat from boyhood and ‘the Widor’ as we termed it, proved once again and especially at Dr Flood’s hands (and feet), an unfailingly uplifting experience.
This was a brilliantly chosen and executed recital by Dr Flood; could we have more?