Music review: Liverpool Organ Day, with Daniel Bishop, Timothy Noon and Ian Tracey

May 7 2008 by Glyn Mon Hughes, Liverpool Daily Post

THE fact that Liverpool can boast three of the most famous organs built in the last 150 years or so is remarkable.

The two cathedrals have two of the most significant 20th-century instruments, while the organ at St George’s Hall should have World Heritage status. And the great thing is that they are played regularly, with St George’s Hall featuring increasingly as a concert venue which includes music for the organ.

This Bank Holiday extravaganza began with Daniel Bishop, sub-organist at Liverpool Cathedral, playing a range of music from the popular and competently played D minor Toccata and Fugue by Bach, through an inspirational performance of Howells’s Psalm Prelude Set 1 No 2, and a thoughtful performance of Darke’s overly-long Retrospection.

Bishop’s talents shone through in Whitlock’s Plymouth Suite, where a sparkling Toccata was accompanied by typically wistful interpretations of Lantana and Salix.

The high point – and a chance for theatre – came in Bishop’s own arrangement of John Williams’s Hymn to the Fallen, from Saving Private Ryan. It might be somewhat sentimental but the inspired inclusion of side drum, played by former cathedral chorister Andrew Davey as he processed from the Rankin Porch under the central space to the High Altar, was much appreciated by the audience. The afternoon performance, by Timothy Noon, at the Metropolitan Cathedral, perversely included the same Howells Psalm Prelude, totally differently interpreted – but nonetheless moving.

The somewhat French-inspired programme included the first movement from Widor’s Sixth Symphony and the rather trite Carillon de Westminster, by Vierne.

Particularly interesting was Noon’s ability to make the organ sound like a French instrument, especially in the excerpts from the Baroque Messe des Couvents, by Couperin.

The final performance was given by city organist Ian Tracey at St George’s Hall, a curtain- raiser to what will become a regular series of recitals at the Hall – something abandoned in the 1980s and, surely, a welcome addition to the vibrant round of organ recitals in the area.