This is the perfect combination: Harold Darke's music played on the very organ at which he presided for half a century by a player who is not only Darke's successor as organist at St Michael's, Cornhill, but has an uncanny empathy with music of this style. These performances aren't merely authoritative, they positively ooze intimacy and affection—flowing with an ease and naturalness that no amount of study could achieve.
Whether any of these three components is worth hearing in its own right is another matter. The organ, while it boasts some pleasant enough stops, comes across as a pretty featureless creature sounding like a thousand other large English church organs, with an audible wind hiss which does nothing to enhance the recorded sound. Jonathan Rennert's playing is never going to set the world on fire and, although the music offers no real scope for virtuosity (small bursts of flamboyance in the Chorale Prelude on Darwell's 148th are short-lived), clarity of articulation is not one of the more obvious aspects of these performances. And the programme is thoroughly unmemorable. It's all so comfortable and predictable. Darke's music spends so much time avoiding any hint of aggression that the result is little more than churchy muzak.'