Reviews

A look at what is happening in the world of the arts.

David Leigh (organ)

The Pro-Cathedral, Dublin

Bonnet - Variations de concert. Reger - Rhapsody in C sharp minor, Op 65 No 1. Messiaen - Dyptique. Jongen - Scherzetto. Peeters - Aria. Dupré - Variations sur un Noël

This recital featured an excellently chosen programme and playing of quiet mastery. The music was predominantly from the Franco-Belgian tradition of player-composers. Contrasts of style and character sustained a well-judged balance between consistency and variety. The virtuoso dash of Bonnet's Variations de concert - an organist's equivalent of that kind of virtuosity one finds in Liszt's Transcendental Studies - was followed by a very different kind of virtuosity, Reger's Rhapsody in C Sharp Minor Op 65 No 1. Reger's saturated chromaticism was followed by the super-saturation of Messiaen's Dyptich.

This recital's success also depended on the instrument's suitability for the repertoire. Someone once quipped that the Pro-Cathedral's organ sounds much better then it deserves to. None of its stops is especially distinguished. Yet because of its placing in the building and its balanced range of sonorities it sounds well, and is eminently suited to French music.

What can one say about David Leigh? His playing was guided by the same thinking that led him to an unbovious yet effective choice of sets of variations to frame the programme. Everything, from the quiet lyricism of Peeters famous Aria to the brilliantly focused compositional and technical virtuosity of Dupré's Variations sur un Noël, was handled with a sureness that epitomises the best in the English cathedral organ tradition from which Leigh comes. Your job is to deliver the goods, disinterestedly and without personal flamboyance. Yet there is nothing utilitarian about the playing, for craftsmanship always serves serious musical insight.

Martin Adams