Considering he held the post of organist at St Luke's, Chelsea for over 20 years and professed the greatest love for the instrument, John Ireland wrote precious little organ music. All of it is included on this disc, as well as Alec Rowley's transcription of the evergreen piano miniature. The Holy Boy (although not his arrangement for organ of the ''Elegy'' from A Downland Suite).
Few organists would be willing to show such an unassuming profile as Jonathan Bielby. This essentially small-scale music doesn't place major technical demands or interpretative problems before the performer. What is needed is a calm, sure and, above all, sympathetic approach; Bielby couldn't have done a better job. The 1913 Binns, a classic example of a large romantic English town hall organ, is also ideal for this programme. Restored in 1978 by Walker's it makes a simply glorious sound; redolent of an age when the Sunday afternoon civic organ recital was almost as much a crowd-puller as the Saturday afternoon football match.
There is even more nostalgia for me with the pieces by Ireland's Royal College of Music associates. Here is some of the very music I cut my teeth on as a student organist. I don't think I can have heard Dyson's stirring Voluntary or Bridge's moving Adagio since then and I had forgotten just what nice pieces they were. Hearing them again after all those years, especially played with such understanding and recorded with such clarity, has been like bumping into long-lost friends on a crowded train. Admittedly with such old pot-boilers as C. S. Lang's Tuba Tune (and the Rochdale Tuba is chubby enough to please the most ardent Tuba-phile) this is a programme likely to appeal only to hopeless organ fanatics. But what's wrong with that? For us this is a real gem of a disc.'