A Lunchtime recital offers the first opportunity to hear the Meeting House organ after major refurbishment
A lunchtime recital this week offers the first opportunity for students and staff to hear the iconic Meeting House organ being played after a major refurbishment. It also marks the appointment of D’Arcy Trinkwon, an international concert organist and the organist at Worth Abbey in West Sussex, as the University’s new organist. Mr Trinkwon’s first concert in the Meeting House chapel – a varied programme including Mozart’s Fantasia in F minor – will be on Wednesday (28 October) at 12 noon. Monthly recitals will then take place on the last Wednesday of each month – with the exception of December, of course.
This summer’s overhaul of the organ – the most comprehensive since it was made nearly 50 years ago – involved several months’ work by expert specialists, who painstakingly removed and cleaned each of the 1,546 pipes and replaced the original 1960s wiring and electrical equipment.
Paul Hale, an organ consultant who advised the University on the project, describes the instrument as “a modern organ but inspired by historical sounds”, and adds: “It is one of the leading instruments of its period but now brought up to date.”
A cutting-edge wireless console (one of only two in the country) and MIDI system has been installed, which means, says Mr Hale, that the organ will “deal better with the uses it might be put to as music technology develops”. For example, the organ can now also be used to play any other instrument, so it would be possible to have a piece for organ and other sounds. Even before the latest enhancements to the instrument, it was considered by experts to be an excellent example of the school of neo-classical organ design and construction in Britain. “It is particularly important as the number of completely new organs made in this style was small,” explains Mr Hale.
Some of the organ’s visually striking features (including plate-glass enclosures with a black metal framework, as well as the black finish to the organ console) have been commented on by observers and constitute part of its iconic and now historic significance.
If you would like to see and hear the organ in its resplendent new state, do come along to Wednesday’s debut recital – and feel free to bring your lunch, too. The organ will of course also play a central role in the annual Carols by Candlelight, to be held this year on Sunday 6 December. In addition, a number of organ concerts and other events are being planned for 2016, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Meeting House.
And now that the historic organ has been brought into the 21st century, Mr Hale expects it to require nothing more than routine tuning for a further 30 years. In fact, he predicts that the renovation will “enable the instrument to perform reliably and musically for the next 50 years”.