CUSTODIAN of a choral tradition enjoying global respect, St John’s College, Cambridge, has stolen the show with its new organ.
The college has replaced a neo-classical Mander of 1990s vintage with an instrument built by Harrison & Harrison, incorporating historic “Father” Willis pipework to create an exemplary English Romantic voice. Tonally resplendent in the inaugural recital of 8 May, given by the renowned organist of Notre-Dame Olivier Latry, this new addition to Gilbert Scott’s chapel sounded warm, bright, balanced, and authentic, in a popular Gallic sequence bookended by Bach arranged by Henri Messerer and Marcel Dupré.
Elsewhere in a five-day festival celebrating the organ’s installation, ample scope to hear the instrument with the choir was provided by concerts and services, including commissions from Cecilia McDowall and the Johnian Fellow Tim Watts, and solo contributions from the virtuosi David Hill and Wayne Marshall. For Latry, however, the challenge was to showcase the instrument’s versatility and character through the agency of his vast technique and musicianship. These were visibly present in the gripping video projection of the four-manual console, commanding rapt attention.
The hands, of course, were mesmerising, in numinous webs of filigree passagework, daring runs of extraordinary agility, and in the ecstatic repeated notes of his eagerly awaited improvisation. Themes chosen were the chant Victimae paschali laudes and, most appropriately, the Magnificat from Michael Tippett’s evening canticles, a 1961 George Guest commission for the college’s 450th anniversary. Here, as in Tippett’s original, the Trompeta Real stop, retained from the Mander, rang out in stentorian tones.
Yet, however loud overall, whether in the opening Bach-Messerer Chaconne from Bach’s Second Violin Partita, or Franck’s Troisième choral, or Alain’s Litanies, there was capacity for yet more volume, a tribute both to Latry’s expert registrations, reproducing the distinctive Cavaillé-Coll sound, and to the builder’s grasp of the instrument’s unique performing space.
Conversely, the final bars of the Andante sostenuto from Widor’s Symphonie gothique were a mere vibration from the pedal’s 32-ft Contra, while the duetting lines of Bach’s Sicilienne BWV 103, transcribed by Vierne, can rarely have been heard with greater clarity. There was exceptional colour, too, in Vincent Paulet’s atonal Élégie, timbre supplanting pitch to offer pure treble tone in a brief, striking interlude.
Vierne’s Carillon de Westminster charmed the capacity audience, no less delighted by the encore of the Bach-Dupré Sinfonia BWV 29. But, for the dedicated team bringing this project to fruition, it was surely an evening of unalloyed satisfaction. Look on BBC Sounds (Radio 3’s Classical Live) and prepare for a new chapter in the evolving legacy of this priceless institution.