It is easy to forget how flexible an instrument the All Saints Willis actually is, but surely not when under the command of an organist with the stamina of D’Arcy Trinkwon. The opening Prelude & Fugue in C by Johann Krebs was convincingly crisp and bright, with a real North German twang to it. Even the lengthy pedal passages and the dance-like fugue belied the weight of the action and the large amount of coupling involved. The baroque sound was carried over into an arrangement of Handel’s Concerto Op4 No5, with delightful, almost cheeky, ornamentation in the final movement.
Mendelssohn’s Prelude & Fugue Op37 No3 brought us firmly into the 19th century, with virtuoso writing which never becomes flashy, though it does allow for some neat dexterity in registration and rapid changes across the manuals.
Frederick Holloway’s Scherzo from his Organ Symphony Op47 was unfamiliar but made a fluttering interlude before the power of Boellmann’s Suite Gothique.
I had not realised that Flor Peeters’ Modale Suite was based on Boellmann’s, but playing them back to back was fascinating if only to see how the younger composer drew on the emotional content of the earlier work, reforming it into a more contemporary image. It is unashamedly lyrical in style and often florid in its writing which certainly suited D’Arcy Trinkwon’s approach.
The Berceuse and Impromptu by Vierne were used as a reflective bridge into Liszt’s Fantasia and Fugue on BACH. If there were problems of clarity in this performance they were not down to the organist. Jean Guillou delights in overblown textures which can ring round the vast spaces of St Eustache in Paris, and his arrangement would probably excite there, but there were times even D’Arcy Trinkwon’s dexterity was thwarted by the density of the version which almost pushed the Willis beyond its comfort zone.
This was even more obvious in the delightful encore Toccata which had all the fury of the Liszt but the clarity and finesse of the earlier baroque pieces. BH
Next Week – David Flood – 7.30pm All Saints Church, Hastings with works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Durufle, Vierne and Widor.