Yet again an enthusiastic audience of nearly two hundred organ music lovers were in the Usher Hall for a lunchtime concert by the City Organist, Dr John Kitchen. This week's theme was Music with Edinburgh Connections.
It began with Francis Jackson's Edinburgh Fanfare written originally for St Giles' Cathedral and the Edinburgh Festival of 1957. John Kitchen told us that it was unlikely that Donald Sprinck's Rhapsody Caledonia had been played in the Usher Hall before. He described it as Delius-like, and that it used plenty of the organ's tuba stop. For many years the composer was teaching music at Merchiston Castle School and it was known that a number of former pupils had travelled some distance to be in the Usher Hall with us. Indeed on my way out I overheard sometime telling his friend that it was Donald Sprinck who had taught him how to play the piano. Later we heard Sprinck's A Scottish Tuba Tune - cheerful and great fun.
Alfred Hollins was blind from birth but one of the great organist of a hundred years ago who spent the second half of his time as a Church of Scotland organist in Edinburgh. He died in 1942. His romantic and sentimental Evening Rest allowed us to hear the seldom used carillon of the Usher Hall organ throughout the piece.
We heard two hymn tune preludes by Kenneth Leighton whom John Kitchen remembered as a Music Professor and died a year or so after John had joined the Music Faculty of the University in 1988. These were followed by a work composed in 2014 by Cecilia McDowall, a pupil of Kenneth Leighton. She had been in Edinburgh recently and was able to discuss this new work with John Kitchen. Written for graduation ceremonies of the University of Portsmouth, it may well feature in the fourteen similar ceremonies of the University of Edinburgh later this month.
Alfred Hollins' Concert Rondo in B flat brought the fascinating and intriguing fifty minutes to a close. John Kitchen is an Edinburgh treasure and long may he continue as City Organist.
Performance: Wednesday 17th June 2015 at 1.10pm