Brighton Year-Round 2024
John Collins Organ Recital St Nicholas Church, Brighton
John Collins
Genre: Live Music, Music
Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
John Collins’ traversals of organ music from 16th-19th centuries are an institution. He performs at St Nicholas’s fine small bright organ
Another John Collins gem. And so much more music, and composers of whom we’ve never heard. We are luckier than we can realise.
Review
John Collins’ traversals of organ music from 16th-19th centuries are an institution. He performs at St Nicholas’s fine small bright organ and begins in the early-ish 16th century with Heliadoro de Paiva (1502-52) whose Tenti de Quarto Tom is a bright shrouded prelude to the rest
The Iberian organ tradition is becoming better known but Collins has made it a speciality. Jumping ahead with Pedro de Aurajo (1649-1704) two generations before Domenico Scarlatti arrived to change Hispanic keyboard music forever. Yet it’s a bright rock sound the Conconancias de 1st Tom makes.
Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) is the giant here. Transformer with Byrd and the British school of Bull.snd Gibbons of European keyboard music, his Capriccio Sesto sopra la Bassa Fiamenga of 1624:is a Compendium of Frescobaldi’s assertion they not edit does one come by such insouciance. And the flourishes and sudden leaks of his music still thrill the ear.
Andres Lorente (1624-1703) comes from over a generation ln after. His Medio Registro de dos Tuples de 1:Tono de Mano derecho is a more sober, florid in a more mid-Baroque density.
Moving to France you immediately encounter a higher brighter sound. Francois Roberday (@1624-80) is younger than the great Chambonnieres who founded the French Clavecinists but a bit older than Louis Couperin. And as an organisation he seems inordinate and alone. His Fugue etc caprice sur le mesme sujet No.6 in D minor from 1660 usher’s in a bright early glimpse of the Rococo. This is still mid baroque but lighter and wholly secular.
John Redford who died in 1547 is another composer I’ve never heard of and I’m no slouch. His Veni Redemptor Gentium is from. The same period as earlier Tallis, Tye, Sheppard and Mundy. That includes the in-between generation before Byrd. But here the Catholic English music still reigns. Florid, powerful and polyphonic like the choral music but sober too. A real find.
Johan Pachelbel (1653-1706) is another famous composer finally famous for music other than one of the 80 canons he wrote. His choral and instrumental music is revealing him as a composer of real stature between Buxtehude and Bach in the German world. His Choral Prelude Der Tag Der Ist so freudenreivh sounds more sober than it is. It’s celebratory even proto-Handelian, full of arrival and ceremony.
Anton Metres from somewhere in the 18th century is a stray Spanish composer wholly obscure yet clearly aware of other musical traditions. I enjoyed his Rococo Toccata Pastorell No 2 in C for its bright foray into the rest of Europe as Spain languished. A bit like an early Goya.
Finally a Collins favourite. Starling Goodwin (1710-74) fully absorbed the influx of Handel and his contemporary organist colleague John Stanley. Like the more famous Stanley and other British composers of the period, Goodwin was much given to Voluntaries.
We get two here. The one in F Book 1 No.5 Vox and Echo that really leaps across the church. It’s bright, alert, knows what it is and precisely how to affect listeners. Secular in disguise it’s also hugely enjoyable in its faintly innocent F pastoral.
The Voluntary in A Book 1 No 11 is a more straightforward extent. Again brilliant it’s also as warm A major in the 18th century coins be. Both at an Allegro non troppo are attractive relatively but not relentlessly extrovert. Goodwin is being seriously championed and put in the map.
Another Collins gem. And so much more music, and composers of whom we’ve never heard. We are luckier than we can realise.
