In his informative and elegantly written note our own JF-A is so frank as to seem to be knocking down his own wicket. ''No significant original music survives for this combination [of trumpet and organ],'' he admits, ''and there is no reason to suspect that [eighteenth-century] composers would have written any.'' Furthermore, he points out, the natural valveless trumpet would have found it hard not to be swamped by the organ and even harder to accommodate its own pythagorean system to the organ's immutable tuning. However, he continues, substitution of one instrument for another was then so common that today's practice of transcription (of course using modern instruments) is merely continuing the tradition... Well, up to a point, JF-A; but I hope I don't sound too purist if I say that trumpet-and-organ never convinces me as an altogether natural medium.
Nevertheless, there are several current discs of this type, and here we can applaud the trumpeter's clean-cut rhythmicality, his fine legato line (e.g. in the charming Rondeau of the Muffat suite), his musicianly moulding of phrases, and his brilliant virtuosity in the violin figurations of the Albinoni Op. 6 Sonata (which, like the Fasch, calls for some confident high-register work); but while the trumpet is a completely convincing choice for the Mouret, in some other cases the transformation of the pieces' original timbre changes their character to an alarming extent. This may be partly due to the very forthright trumpet tone favoured-the Telemann oboe concerto here, for instance, becomes considerably more weighty-and some very forward placing of the trumpet in relation to the organ (for example in the unpublished Albinoni C major Sonata, whose antiphonal phrases are conspicuously unevenly balanced) exacerbates the situation. Balance in fact varies between items: even allowing for the difference in the nature of the works, compare the Muffat (which springs a surprise by including four resonant pistol-shots in a 'cops-and-robbers' movement) with the better-integrated Frescobaldi canzonas (which are delightful). Freeman-Attwood's arrangements of orchestral accompaniments and Iain Simcock's choices of registration on the Walker organ in Bromley Parish Church, are excellent throughout, and the latter's various solo movements reveal him as a most sensitive player.'