What’s in a title? Certainly not much so far as Priory are concerned. I doubt whether anyone would correctly guess the contents of this disc entitled “Popular Organ Music”. No Toccata and Fugue in D minor, no Widor; yes, some Bach – including the St Anne Prelude and Fugue – and Franck’s Piece heroique, which is popular with organists. But who would ever have expected Alain’s Le jardin suspendu? As for Pierre Cochereau’s Bolero sur un theme de Racquet there can be very few who even know of its existence; it’s actually an improvisation painstakingly transcribed by David Briggs. His labours have not been in vain. This is a riveting piece accompanied throughout its 12-minute crescendo, Ravel-like, by a side-drum (Priory haven’t thought fit to tell us who this patient percussionist is – or is it a machine?). It displays the wonderful Gloucester organ to scintillating effect as does the (also uncredited) arrangement of Dukas’s L’apprenti sorcier.
Briggs’s own transcription of movements from the Nutcracker is no match for that of the complete suite by Keith John on his disc. Tchaikovsky’s clever scoring of the “Miniature Overture” – no instrument lower in pitch than the viola – has been ignored by Briggs, who clearly has a penchant for a 16-footer or two, while John lets it sparkle with twinkling 8, 4, 2 and 1 foot flutes. (Listen also how ingeniously John imitates the celesta in the “Dance of the sugar-plum fairy”.) I’m not so taken by his transcription of four movements from another great Russian ballet score, Romeo and Juliet, although only with Prokofiev’s music do we have anything that really lives up to the disc’s title: apart, that is, from a movement called “Rhythmic Energy” which concludes John’s own intense and unappealing suite, Time and Motion.
Reservations apart, both discs provide a spectacular feast of virtuoso playing and stunning organ sound. We have here two of the very finest British organists playing two top-flight instruments on magnificently recorded discs, that from Gloucester being well into the demonstration-quality league.'