{"id":4966,"date":"2019-02-17T16:28:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T16:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=4966"},"modified":"2019-02-17T16:28:45","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T16:28:45","slug":"matt-geer-organ-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=4966","title":{"rendered":"Matt Geer: Organ Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>St John the Evangelist, Hollington, Saturday 16 February 2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Organist Matt Geer opened the new season of musical events at St John\u2019s with a concert entirely devoted to transcriptions of popular works. A rousing <em>Fanfare for the Common Man<\/em> led into movements from Grieg\u2019s <em>Holberg Suite<\/em> before the haunting beauty of Satie\u2019s <em>Trois Gymnopedie. <\/em>The slow, almost languorous, pace was entirely in keeping with the delicacy of the writing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Matt-Geer-2-19-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4967\" src=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Matt-Geer-2-19-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"4096\" height=\"2304\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Matt-Geer-2-19-1.jpg 4096w, https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Matt-Geer-2-19-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Matt-Geer-2-19-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Matt-Geer-2-19-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Matt-Geer-2-19-1-500x281.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 4096px) 100vw, 4096px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The two pieces from Saint-Saens\u2019 <em>Le carnaval des animaux <\/em>came as a complete contrast with the weighty <em>L\u2019elephant<\/em> and the more serene <em>Le cygnet. \u00a0<\/em>Two familiar pieces by Elgar were likewise carefully contrasted with the Mendelssohnian textures of his <em>Cantique<\/em> and the triumphalism of the <em>Imperial March. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>As with the earlier Satie, Debussy\u2019s <em>La fille aux cheveux de lin<\/em> was originally written for piano but its brief life here was effective before the more extrovert attack of Philip Glass\u2019 <em>Mad Rush. <\/em>Although written for the piano \u2013 and there are a number of versions available on YouTube \u2013 this works remarkably well on the organ and never seemed like a transcription. The melodic development mirrors the opening scenes from his opera <em>Akhnaten <\/em>which is currently in repertoire at ENO.<\/p>\n<p>The final section returned to Grieg with four items from <em>Peer Gynt<\/em> ending, inevitably, with <em>In the Hall of the Mountain King. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>A good sized audience greeted the performance with enthusiasm and the retiring collection was to be split between Water Aid and the church\u2019s building programme.<\/p>\n<p>The next concert is on St George\u2019s Day, 23 April, at 3.00pm when there will be a recital by two professional harpists \u2013 possibly a first for Hastings?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>St John the Evangelist, Hollington, Saturday 16 February 2019 Organist Matt Geer opened the new season of musical events at St John\u2019s with a concert entirely devoted to transcriptions of popular works. A rousing Fanfare for the Common Man led &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=4966\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4968,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions\/4968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}