WHAT IS AN ORGAN CONCERT?

LOCG lists most of London’s organ concerts. These are events where music is centre stage. We listen.

We can also hear organ music at ceremonial occasions, whether sacred or secular. The sound of the organ at these events helps set the scene, and its music is important, though not central to the proceedings. Impromptu applause startled one university organist recently - an intrusive mobile phone before a degree ceremony had inspired a magnificent improvisation, culminating in a four-part fugue on the ring-tone; he thought nobody in particular would be listening. We are so accustomed to hearing the organ in this gebrauchsmusik function, that most of us have forgotten how to listen to it. It was no surprise therefore to learn of one much-trumpeted concert series which confuses the two.

London, alas, has no venue like it. Imagine a mahogany-cased organ dominating the central, marble-clad atrium of the Science Museum or the V and A, and you have some idea of the glorious setting which is the Lewis organ at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Restoration of Kelvingrove with huge generosity from public and private funds was completed recently, and happily, the world-class organ was included in the project.

One condition of funding the organ’s restoration was that the organ should be regularly used. And it is. Recitals are advertised. You can hear them at weekends, during ordinary visiting hours, played as visitors pass through the gloriously resonant hall, discussing their many discoveries in the museum. Self-evidently, such conditions nullify potential musical enjoyment.

As far as the City Council is concerned, honour is satisfied. It’s only organ music! Nobody really wants to stop and listen, do they? Yet this is a historic instrument of major European importance, and we have players of major international status who can create wonderful music on such an instrument in such a venue.

It took the Incorporated Association of Organists to show the Council what could be done, or rather it took a fine organist. Gillian Weir proved at the 2007 IAO Congress that a Kelvingrove concert could be a success both musically and financially. To their credit, local politicians present agreed. We hope they will look again at their planning.

Once ears are opened, everyone knows the difference between hearing and listening. Vive la difference, and may increased awareness increase appreciation of all the wonderful concerts advertised in this season’s LOCG.

Catherine Ennis

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Last updated: 05 May, 2008