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Church Music Quarterly

This is an important recording in many ways. It is the first recording of Cheltenham’s Norman and Beard instrument since its latest 2017 Harrison & Harrison restoration.

The CD contains three major works, one from each of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries – superbly played and recorded. First up is Jongen’s Sonata eroica of 1930, little known to non-organists but here receiving a persuasive performance that might endear it to those hearing it for the first time. The heroic introduction knocks one back (thanks to instrument and player, and to the dynamic range of the recording) before a series of very varied variations, a fugue and a triumphant conclusion.

Jonathan Dove’s The Dancing Pipes was written in 2014 for St Laurence, Ludlow and the 2w50th anniversary of an organ that still has most of a 1764 Snetzler at its heart, The music dances, the pipes dance, and the organist’s hands and feet dance as what the composer describes as ‘a little dancing figure’ is put through all sorts of transformations and contrapuntal inventions. The CD concludes with Liszt’s mighty Fantasia and Fugue on ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’, played with attention to detail and opportunities for ‘orchestral’ colour changes.