11 August 2014
Jonathan Allsopp is about to take up an organ scholarship at Durham Cathedral while studying at Durham University. On the strength of his concert at All Saints yesterday evening he will be a fine asset to the cathedral and its music.
The first half focused on baroque compositions and his choices throughout confirmed a very fine ear for registration on the Willis, reflecting a North German sound world. The Sinfonia from Bach’s Wir danken dir Gott had a lightness of touch and impressively fluid articulation which belied the weight of the action. There were lovely echo effects in the opening movement of CPE Bach’s third sonata in F and again highly sympathetic registration.
Just as we were getting lulled into a baroque comfort-zone we were gently nudged back to reality with Zsolt Gardonyi’s Mozart Changes a tongue-in-cheek arrangement of a Mozart piano movement which slips easily into jazz improvisation. As Jonathan has a real feel for jazz it would be good to hear more of this from him.
Byrd’s Fantasia BK46 brought us back to a more austere atmosphere though it was never acid, and Bruhns challenging Praeludium in E minor with its chromatic writing and sudden shifts of mood and dynamic, rounded off a most impressive first half.
The second moved us into the romantic period, opening with Guilmant’s Sonata No3 Op5. Suddenly we were in the world of Cavaille-Coll and the heady string sounds of the late nineteenth century. The central Adagio was particularly telling and prepared us for the gentle flutes of the Romance from Vierne’s 4th Symphony.
In a subtle piece of programme planning the troubled simplicity of Vierne’s Romance flowed easily into Maxwell Davies’ familiar, but welcome, Farewell to Stromness. Although the Willis can’t provide the nasal bag-pipe sound the work seems to yearn for, the soft voicing was very effective.
Edward Marsh’ Toccata sur le theme ‘Pat le facteur’ proved to be more in keeping with the earlier part of the programme than expected. While a gentle spoof, playing with the theme from Postman Pat, the work is obviously based on the Toccata from Boellmann’s Suite Gothique and consequently quite at home with Guilmant and Vierne!
At the start of the programme we had been promised fairies and we got these in the encore with a delightfully light Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker.
Marion Lovell had taken a risk engaging Jonathan Allsopp effectively sight unseen. As so often, her instincts were spot on and I hope we hear from him again very soon.
Next Monday 18 August, Stephen Disley.