Organ Recital by Linden Innes-Hopkins • St Mary’s Church Welwyn • Saturday 3 July at 11.15 am

Organ Recital by Linden Innes-Hopkins • St Mary’s Church Welwyn • Saturday 3 July at 11.15 am
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Festival Toccata (To Edwin H Lemare Esq.) Percy E Fletcher (1879 - 1932)
Lemare was the most highly acclaimed and highly paid organist of his generation. Perhaps Percy Fletcher wrote this Toccata for Mr Lemare. Fletcher was predominantly a composer of light music, being associated with theatres in Drury Lane and also with brass bands. The outer sections of Festival Toccata use alternating chords to generate excitement, while the middle section has a fanfare-like theme.
Chorale Prelude on ‘Down Ampney’ Herbert Sumsion (1899 - 1995)
Down Ampney is the village in Gloucestershire where Ralph Vaughan Williams was born; his father was the vicar. He named the beautiful tune on which Sumsion’s piece is based after the village. Sumsion had a close association with composers - of whom Vaughan Williams was one - who are regarded as having brought about a 20th century renaissance in English music.
Toccata in F major, BWV 540 J S Bach (1685 - 1750)
While a cantata is a sung piece and a sonata is a sounded (i.e. instrumental) piece, a toccata is a ‘touched piece’ - ergo, a keyboard piece. However, more than that, a toccata is usually a piece that flaunts the player’s skill, both in dexterity and in musicality! Bach’s Toccata in F may well be the longest single movement for organ that he composed; it is around 9 minutes long! Within that time-frame, many of the player’s skills are on display, including his or her footwork. It was said of Bach that he could ‘imitate with perfect accuracy every theme, every passage that his hands had played’ (Peter Hurford). The Toccata in F begins with an extended canon followed by a pedal solo; this is repeated in a new key. Once the strict counterpoint has been ‘done with’, Bach starts to play around with the opening music but more richly scored and interlaced with an arpeggio figure which does indeed require the player’s feet to be as nimble and agile as the hands.
Mr Theo Saunders, His Trumpet Tune Antony Baldwin (b. 1957)
Antony Baldwin’s Trumpet Tune pays homage, in the title, to the way that Tudor keyboard pieces (and, incidentally, two collections of clavichord pieces by Herbert Howells) were styled: ‘The Earl of Salisbury, His Pavan’, for example. Baldwin’s music is more Handelian than Tudor, however; solo Trumpet sections alternate with full chorus on the Swell (upper) manual. This is an unashamedly cheerful piece in which the Great Trumpet stop plays a starring role.
Sarabande (3rd movement) from ‘Baroques -Suite for Organ’
Seth Bingham (1882 - 1972)
In a nod to tomorrow’s fourth of July celebrations in America, this is a movement from ‘Baroques’, a Suite for Organ by the American composer, Seth Bingham. The suite explores some of the compositional techniques used in the Baroque period. Baroque music has dance at its heart and a Sarabande is a slow, stately dance in triple time and probably originated in Spain.
Choral varié sur le thème du ‘Veni Creator’ (Opus 4)
Maurice Duruflé (1902 - 1986)
Duruflé was something of a perfectionist and was often critical of his compositions and frequently revised them, sometimes even after publication. Furthermore, there were several of his compositions that he never included in public performance; one of those pieces that did not ‘make the cut’ of the concert platform was the Prelude and Adagio which precede the Choral varié, the finale of today’s recital. The theme (the plainsong hymn, ‘Veni Creator’) is followed by four distinct variations, the last being an ebullient toccata.