Innholdsfortegnelse for Autumn 2025 i Choir & Organ

I listen to a lot of choral music – it’s part of the job! But every so often, a performance cuts through routine listening and lands with real impact. That’s what happened the first time I heard The Crossing. A group with a sound so cohesive and alive, it almost felt like I was discovering choral music all over again. So it was a great privilege to travel to Philadelphia for the cover story, to get to know the group, meeting Donald Nally and learning about 20 years of creative commissioning. They are musicians of immense authenticity, and not afraid to take risks or speak out in order to create meaningful art. Elsewhere, America continues to feature with an article by Jeremy Filsell about the composer and organist Calvin Hampton…

The Cathedral Music Trust has announced the 27 recipients in its latest round of the Cathedral Music Support Programme, totalling £470,000. In the second year of its renewed main awards scheme, the Cathedral Music Support Programme is awarding 20 new recipients, as well as continuing to support 20 choral foundations which were awarded multi-year grants in 2024. Among the recipients is Chester Cathedral, which has been given support for fortnightly singing lessons for choristers, as well as CPD opportunities for staff. Also Southwark Cathedral, whose award will support the salary of the Organist and Assistant Director of Music. Jonathan Mayes, CEO, said of the awards: ‘The invaluable work of our cathedral and church musicians enriches the lives of both participants and the communities in which they operate… This much-needed investment…

THE THREE CHOIRS FESTIVAL HAS announced Gavin Higgins as its inaugural Associate Composer, marking the launch of a major composer development programme. This three-year residency deepens the festival’s ties with living composers, placing long-term creative collaboration at the heart of its programming in the lead up to its 300th edition in 2028. Higgins’s first commission as Associate Composer, a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, will be premiered at the 2026 Festival in Gloucester, the city of his birth. The work will be premiered by the combined cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester at Choral Evensong on Wednesday 29 July 2026, and will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Each year, a new composer will join the programme, building a cohort of three composers in residence by…

NICOLAS KYNASTON (1941–2025) Preston/Murrill; Jackson/Cocker; Danby/Boëllmann. To many organists of a certain generation, these names will instantly bring to mind the EMI compilation, The King of Instruments. They might continue the list: Willcocks/Bach – and Kynaston/Vierne. This last track – the Carillon de Westminster – was my own first encounter with Kynaston’s playing. Even to my novice’s ears there was something that set it apart. Other recordings by him soon joined my collection: Popular Organ Works at the Albert Hall; the Elgar Sonata at Ingolstadt; Bach at Clifton. Kynaston came from a spiritual and artistic family; his mother was a violinist, his father a priest and painter. After a choristership at Westminster Cathedral, he attended Downside, but after taking lessons with Fernando Germani, he walked out, never to return. After…

Every year, the Royal Philharmonic Society runs a composer development programme, supporting a cohort of emerging composers through new commissions. Some of the UK’s best-known composers have come up through the RPS scheme, with alumni including Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Tom Coult, Daniel Kidane, Freya Waley-Cohen and Ayanna Witter-Johnson. For 2025, the choral commission (with the Marian Consort) has gone to London-based composer Emily Hazrati. Vocal writing is central to Hazrati’s work, and her energetic and lyrical sound has led to commissions from groups including the National Youth Choir and St Martin’s Voices. She is Oxford Song’s associate composer for 2024-2026, and her two operas, TIDE and Paradise Garden, have been performed at Aldeburgh Festival and Milton Court, respectively. Hazrati started composing seriously while she was studying music at Oxford University, her…

Despite its excellent quality and ready adaptability, Handel and Stanley’s solo music for organ is rarely given the performance exposure it deserves. Perhaps a reason for this relative neglect is its deceptively straightforward appearance on the page (Handel’s six fugues and some outer concerto movements aside!). To the 18th-century organist, however, scores like this are an open invitation to vivid ornamentation; but even without such flights of fancy, this repertoire can speak with a pure and elegant beauty in the hands of players of widely different levels of experience. This has always been the case: witness the numerous subscribers – professional and amateur – to many an English set of voluntaries, and the ubiquity of arrangements of Handel’s more popular movements by his publisher, John Walsh. Perhaps one of the…

ORGAN CDS Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies Organ Transcriptions Vol 10 Hansjörg Albrecht, St. Etienne du mont, Paris Oehms OC1905 It seems my last review of this Bruckner series was premature in declaring the ninth volume the final chapter for there is another, almost forgotten, symphony: the Study Symphony. This work from the end of Bruckner’s studies in 1863 is brought back to life and transformed into an organ symphony in an arrangement by Erlberhard Klotz. The album opens with a speculative reconstruction by Erwin Horn of Bruckner’s improvisation to mark the reopening of the organ in Vienna Cathedral in 1886. Cleverly bridging the gap between these early and late works is Alpha and Omega by Enjott Schneider. This work, drawing on the Te Deum, provides an opportunity to explore more…

How are you feeling about performing at the BBC Proms? I’m incredibly excited to be making my Proms debut this year! It’s something I’ve dreamed about over the years, and so I’m over the moon that it’s actually happening. I was lucky enough to perform on the Royal Albert Hall organ earlier this year and I’m delighted to get to play on it again. Tell us about balancing solo performance with life at Coventry Cathedral Anyone who works in cathedral music knows that it is all consuming, so I try as much as possible to book concerts during choir holidays. In terms of fitting in regular organ practice, I just have to be strict with myself and stick to times that I carve out. Popularity of the organ is certainly…

Where did your choral journey begin? I started as a chorister at Sheffield Cathedral aged 10, going on to Lancing College Chapel Choir at 16. What were the highlights and lowlights of your experience? The main highlight was definitely the friends for life that I made while I was in Sheffield – a lot of us still meet up every year and each year the group gets bigger with marriages and children! I suppose it would also be remiss not to mention the musical training it gave me – truly second to none. I suppose any lowlights would inevitably come when I moved to Lancing, as I was boarding extremely far away from home and struggled with that quite a lot. Is there one piece that if you heard it…

OWAIN PARK HAS BEEN APPOINTED Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers, beginning in autumn 2026. He will succeed Sofi Jeannin who has led the group since 2018. Park has been Principal Guest Conductor of the group since 2022. Over the last year, Park conducted the group in several performances. In February 2024, he conducted a concert celebrating the music of distinguished composer Dame Judith Weir and in October 2024, he conducted the BBC Singers as part of their Centenary concert at the Barbican. Park will next conduct the BBC Singers on 9 October at Milton Court for a concert with acclaimed Nigerian-Scottish trumpeter, Aaron Azunda Akugbo. Park says: ‘I’m absolutely thrilled to be stepping into the role of Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers – it’s both a dream and…

THE RENATUS HARRIS ORGAN AT St James’s Church, Piccadilly, will be rebuilt as part of a £20 million restoration project. 85 years after the last restoration, due to the bombing of the church and the rectory during WWII, the ‘Wren Project’ seeks to rejuvenate the building, courtyard and gardens. The organ was originally in the private Roman Catholic chapel of King James II in Whitehall Palace. It was then given to St James’s Church by Queen Mary in 1691. The organ served the church well for around 280 years, with the likes of Handel and Leopold Stokowski playing it. The case was carved by Grinling Gibbons. The organ has not been in playable condition since the 1960s. The contract to renew the instrument has been awarded to the British firm…

The Organ Club, founded by a group of organ enthusiasts in 1926, is set to celebrate its centenary in 2026. Festivities will begin this September with a launch lunch in the grand Cutlers’ Hall in the City of London. The event will include speeches from the Club’s Vice-President Dame Gillian Weir, and Lord Berkeley (the composer and Radio 3 presenter Michael Berkeley), after which members will walk round the corner to St Paul’s Cathedral for Evensong. Other celebrations next year include three new compositions for organ commissioned from leading composers, an annual organ-playing competition for teenagers (open to competitors from the UK and overseas) and an organ recruitment drive spear-headed by a group of young members who call themselves The Musketeers.…

A personal invitation to try the organ is one of the most powerful methods of recruiting a new organist. ‘My piano teacher was an organist and she introduced me to the instrument when I was 11’. Ann Elise Smoot The Royal College of Organists (RCO) has designated 2025 as Play the Organ Year, inviting all who care about the future of organ playing to take part. One contribution from the Society of Women Organists (SWO) is a simple campaign called pluSWOne, which offers one-to-one organ introductions to girls and women. And it works – just look at our delighted pluSWOne recruits and their comments on our webpage! ‘A family friend introduced me to the organ when I was 12. That later grew into a burning determination to study the instrument’.…

VENUE FOCUS Norwich Cathedral Organ Norwich Cathedral houses one of the largest and most significant pipe organs in the UK, with 5,767 pipes ranging in length from 32 feet to just one inch. The earliest reference to an organ at the cathedral dates to the 14th century, and builders such as Dallam, Renatus Harris, Byfield and Bishop have all contributed to its legacy. A five-manual organ by Norman and Beard was installed in 1899 but was seriously damaged by fire in 1938. It was rebuilt between 1940 and 1942 by Hill, Norman and Beard, with casework added in 1950 by Stephen Dykes Bower. Between 2022 and 2023, the instrument underwent a major rebuild by Harrison & Harrison of Durham, with a complete overhaul of pipework, reorganisation of the internal layout…

One of the final recordings made at Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue during my tenure leading the choir has focused on a somewhat neglected figure in the panoply of American sacred music. While Calvin Hampton’s name pops up periodically on organ recital programmes these days through the perceptible popularity of his Five Dances in the US, he remains something of a hinterland figure – and particularly so when considering liturgical and choral music. Hampton was an early victim of the AIDS epidemic, long before any remedy or medical control of the condition was widely available. He sadly lost his life prematurely at the age of only 45, in 1984 after a lengthy illness. His grave in Ravenna, Ohio (where he was raised) bears the epitaph he himself wrote: ‘Calvin Hampton –…

Rebecca Tavener rounds up the latest releases Let’s begin with news of two ensembles recently the subjects of features in C&O, each energetically hewing a reputation from deep immersion in their native music. Ensemble pro Victoria offers Henry VIII on Tour – Music from Tudor Royal Progresses [Delphian DCD34335), a collaboration with the universities of Newcastle and York and Historic Royal Palaces, evoking the soundscape of a Tudor royal progress with music both sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental (lute, harp, and organ). The group’s trademark vocal release and vibrato – no pretendy treble stuff here – enlivens works by Cornysh, Taverner, White et al, plus rarities by William Rasar and Dionysius Prioris. The students of the New Vocal Ensemble join them in the full passages of Raser’s Missa Christe…

Rupert Gough looks across newly-published liturgical settings for choirs I thought I would start this autumnal collection with a look at new publications from the Church Music Society. If you imagine this august institution (sorry), founded in 1906, was only for early music then you could be missing out. Recent publications include a wide variety of British church music spanning 500 years. It is good to see David Trendell’s Preces and Responses (SATB; CMS Publications) published for the first time a decade after his sudden death. Composed during his student days in Oxford these relatively simple responses are harmonically inventive and worthy of being a regular part of Evensong repertory. As you would also expect, the CMS also unearths some interesting historic treasures including recently the Restoration Canticles (SATB (SSA…

SAINT THOMAS CHURCH FIFTH AVENUE New York has announced Richard Tanner as its next Organist and Director of Music. Tanner replaces Jeremy Filsell, who has been in the role since 2019, and joins from his position of Director of Music at the prestigious Rugby school in the UK, established in 1567. During his time at Rugby, he founded the Rugby Choristers at Bilton Grange, the UK’s most recently formed Anglican choral foundation. Tanner also became director of Festival on The Close, a five-day celebration of culture community and creativity all in aid of Cancer Research and The Bradley Club. Speaking of the appointment, Tanner said, ‘I am delighted to have been invited by Fr Turner to join the vibrant community at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue … I look forward…

Music publisher Stainer and Bell has signed an agreement with the charity Elgar Works, securing exclusive worldwide distribution rights for all titles published by the charity. The new agreement will see Stainer and Bell make the full Elgar Works catalogue – including the Elgar Complete Edition and 11 volumes of Edward Elgar’s Collected Correspondence – available globally to performers, libraries, academics and enthusiasts, broadening the reach of Elgar’s music. St Michael’s Cornhill has announcest Benjamin Markovic as its new Assistant Director of Music and Sir George Thalben-Ball Memorial Organ Scholar 2025-26. Markovic was organ scholar of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and is on a post-graduate ‘collaborative piano’ course at the Royal Academy of Music.…

Western music derived first and foremost from song, since it was through the diffusion of plainsong and folksong that melody, harmony and even tonality came into being. Singing is almost as intrinsic to life as speaking. A person speaks within a limited tonal range capable of communicating words and sentences, but there comes a point for us all when we must abandon speaking in favour of something more assertive. Once we do this, then the mouth and throat muscles become forced to work through a different mechanism, producing a more explosive expulsion of air. The result is a shout, a cry, a call – or song. In performance, members of a choir are effectively calling to their audience. On occasions, they are virtually shouting at them but mainly they are…