Regent Records have the happy knack of making fine recordings of instruments that are slightly off the beaten track but deserve to be better known and more often heard. Every ingredient of this disc is just right: a newish organ (Klais, 1998, a programme ideally suited to the instrument’s specification (30 stops spread over two manuals and pedals) and a player who communicates the music with subtle nuances and a strong sense of freshness.

This CD marks Derek Longman’s retirement from Haileybury after 30 years. He opens with Andriessen’s arresting Thema met Variaties, which allows the listener to experience the richness of the Hauptwerk and Schwellwerk choruses and the glowing warmth of the pedal basses.

It’s good to hear a fresh, convincing rendition of Rheinberger’s sturdy Eighth Sonata, the most substantial piece on the disc; its Passacaglia should be held up as a model of variation technique. Peeters’s Ave maris stella confection is equally impressive, especially the Toccata, in which every semiquaver can be clearly discerned.

Mendelssohn’s final Sonata is overtly Bachian, its form being that of a Baroque chorale partita (on “Vater unser im Himmelreich”). This is a fluent and colourful performance with some lovely use of the tremulant in the Variations movement, though I still find the final Andante an anticlimax.

Bach’s monumental Passacaglia fares well. The architecture is nicely paced and projected into Blomfield’s Byzantine domed chapel with aplomb. A fine, handsome disc.