Malcolm Proud (organ)

Prelude in E flat BWV552 No 1 - Bach

Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr BWV675 - Bach

Kyrie Gott heiliger Geist BWV671 - Bach

Jesus Christus, unser Heiland BWV688 - Bach

Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir BWV686 - Bach

Duetti BWV8025 - Bach

Fugue in E flat BWV552 No 2 - Bach

Malcolm Proud is one of those musicians who is set apart by virtue of his gift of rhythm. It's not a matter of correctness or, in the simple sense, of accuracy. It goes much deeper than that. It's as if, at least when the music is by Bach, he's gripped by some almost superhuman force. And the ineluctable constraints he experiences translate in his playing into an imposing, visionary inevitability.

The single word that comes most immediately to mind is "monumental", reminding one of what all those critics and musicologists mean who like to draw analogies with architecture by talking of edifices in sound. And the third part of Bach's Clavier Ubung, music that often marries severity and grandeur, is territory where Proud's approach yields results of uncommon richness.

At St Michael's, Dun Laoghaire, on Sunday, his selection of 10 of the 27 pieces that make up this collection included the great opening and closing prelude and fugue, four diverse chorale treatments, and the four duets.

These last are bizarre, even credulity-stretching exercises, which Proud handled with an insight that made their paradoxically restrained extravagance thoroughly invigorating.

At the other end of the scale, the complexity of the six-part Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV686, and the pained, chromatic convolutions at the close of Kyrie Gott heiliger Geist BWV671, were captured with a tension that was almost unbearable. It's hard to imagine that this year of Bach celebrations will produce an organ recital more memorable than this.