Tewkesbury Abbey’s two organs are unusual in that they are both large, romantically inclined four-manual instruments not originally intended for the Gloucestershire building in which they now live. The “Grove” organ started life as a display instrument for the 1885 Inventions Exhibition in London, after which it went on something of a tour. When it arrived in Liverpool a year later, the city organist WT Best described it as “the finest organ of its kind that I have ever played upon”. It came to Tewkesbury in 1887, a gift to mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and has remained in the Abbey’s north transept ever since, its most recent alteration being a “conservative restoration” in 1980-81. The “Milton” organ dates back to 1631 when it was installed in Magdalen College, Oxford. From there it was appropriated by Oliver Cromwell, who took it as his personal instrument for use during his residence at Hampton Court Palace (where, according to legend, the poet John Milton played it). Magdalen claimed it back in 1661, only for it to be sold to Tewkesbury in 1736 – undergoing several overhauls and enlargements since, the most recent in 1997.

This disc, however, features just one organist and Carleton Etherington turns up a programme of sheer musical delight, keeping the mood light and the musical content entertaining without compromising integrity in the pursuance of cheap thrills. Thus Guilmant’s Grand choeur triumphal and the genteel Hollins Intermezzo in D flat have a strait-laced feel which might seem a little restrained but stands up to repeated listening and permits close investigation of the “Grove” organ’s decidedly Victorian charms. He does let his hair down a little more on the more brightly coloured “Milton” organ with Karg-Elert’s Wurlitzer-inspired Valse mignonne and offers up playing of real authority in both Ritter’s magnificent Sonata and Flor Peeters’s little-heard Variations on an Original Theme.

In all his performances Etherington achieves a fine balance between displaying these two organs and conveying the music, and along the way some impressive virtuosity emerges, not least in a scintillating account of WT Best’s magnificent Concert Fantasia on “Men of Harlech” and Saint-Martin’s effervescent Toccata written to celebrate the Liberation of Paris in 1944. The recording is warm and generous.