Sunday 10 March 2024 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Tom Winpenny
St. Albans Cathedral, (UK)
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Tom Winpenny
St. Albans Cathedral, (UK)
Program
Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927)
Fantasie (1958)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Prelude, Trio and Fugue in B flat, BWV 545b
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
from Six Canonic Studies for Pedal Piano, Op. 56 (1845)
iv. Innig
v. Nicht zu schnell
vi. Adagio
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Diptyque (1930)
Judith Bingham (b.1952)
Mountain Music (2017)
Gerald Hendrie (b.1935)
from Six Concert Studies (2020)
ii. Allegro deciso
iii. Allegro ritmico
Judith Weir (b.1954)
Ettrick Banks (1985)
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Loughborough Memorial Chime (1923)
Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)
Toccata in C (1924)
Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927)
Fantasie (1958)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Prelude, Trio and Fugue in B flat, BWV 545b
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
from Six Canonic Studies for Pedal Piano, Op. 56 (1845)
iv. Innig
v. Nicht zu schnell
vi. Adagio
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Diptyque (1930)
Judith Bingham (b.1952)
Mountain Music (2017)
Gerald Hendrie (b.1935)
from Six Concert Studies (2020)
ii. Allegro deciso
iii. Allegro ritmico
Judith Weir (b.1954)
Ettrick Banks (1985)
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Loughborough Memorial Chime (1923)
Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)
Toccata in C (1924)
Tom Winpenny is Assistant Master of the Music at St Albans Cathedral, UK, where his duties include accompanying the daily choral services and directing the acclaimed Cathedral Girls Choir. Previously, he was Sub-Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, London, and during this time he performed with the Cathedral Choir at the American Guild of Organists National Convention, performed in Mahler's Symphony no. 8 with the London Symphony Orchestra, and played for many great state occasions. He has broadcast regularly on BBC Radio and regularly featured on American Public Media's Pipedreams.
He began organ lessons under John Scott Whiteley while a chorister at York Minster, and continued as a Music Scholar at Eton College under Alastair Sampson. After holding the post of Organ Scholar at Worcester Cathedral and then St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, he was for three years Organ Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in music. With the Choir of King's College, he gave concerts in the USA, Hong Kong and throughout Europe, in addition to appearing as their accompanist on CD releases on EMI Classics.
In recent years he has given recitals in St Stephen's Cathedral (Vienna), Grace Cathedral (San Francisco), Birmingham Town Hall, Salisbury Cathedral, Santa Maria Nuova (Fano, Italy), Hildesheim Cathedral (Germany) and Kalmar Cathedral (Sweden). He has also featured as organ soloist in John Rutter’s Christmas celebration concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and has performed Francis Pott's monumental organ symphony Christus.
He has taken part in the first performance of works by Judith Weir, Cecilia McDowall, Judith Bingham, Carl Rütti, Jonathan Dove, Peter Dickinson, Paul Mealor, Francis Grier, Alec Roth and Francis Pott. He has studied with Thomas Trotter and Johannes Geffert, and won First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2008 Miami International Organ Competition.
His many solo organ recordings include Olivier Messiaen’s cycles L’Ascension and La Nativité du Seigneur (Naxos), discs of music by Elisabeth Lutyens, Peter Racine Fricker, Malcolm Williamson and John Joubert (Toccata Classics), music by Lennox and Michael Berkeley, John McCabe and Charles Villiers Stanford (Resonus Classics), and music by Judith Bingham (Naxos). His recordings of Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux/Messe de la Pentecôte and Livre d'Orgue (Naxos) were each awarded five-star reviews both in Choir and Organ magazine (the magazine's Star Choice for Livre d'Orgue) and in the French journal Diapason. In 2022 his recording of Elgar's organ works (Naxos) was awarded a Critic's Choice in Gramophone magazine, whilst his recording of Francis Pott's Christus received the same accolade in the American Record Guide.
He began organ lessons under John Scott Whiteley while a chorister at York Minster, and continued as a Music Scholar at Eton College under Alastair Sampson. After holding the post of Organ Scholar at Worcester Cathedral and then St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, he was for three years Organ Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in music. With the Choir of King's College, he gave concerts in the USA, Hong Kong and throughout Europe, in addition to appearing as their accompanist on CD releases on EMI Classics.
In recent years he has given recitals in St Stephen's Cathedral (Vienna), Grace Cathedral (San Francisco), Birmingham Town Hall, Salisbury Cathedral, Santa Maria Nuova (Fano, Italy), Hildesheim Cathedral (Germany) and Kalmar Cathedral (Sweden). He has also featured as organ soloist in John Rutter’s Christmas celebration concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and has performed Francis Pott's monumental organ symphony Christus.
He has taken part in the first performance of works by Judith Weir, Cecilia McDowall, Judith Bingham, Carl Rütti, Jonathan Dove, Peter Dickinson, Paul Mealor, Francis Grier, Alec Roth and Francis Pott. He has studied with Thomas Trotter and Johannes Geffert, and won First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2008 Miami International Organ Competition.
His many solo organ recordings include Olivier Messiaen’s cycles L’Ascension and La Nativité du Seigneur (Naxos), discs of music by Elisabeth Lutyens, Peter Racine Fricker, Malcolm Williamson and John Joubert (Toccata Classics), music by Lennox and Michael Berkeley, John McCabe and Charles Villiers Stanford (Resonus Classics), and music by Judith Bingham (Naxos). His recordings of Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux/Messe de la Pentecôte and Livre d'Orgue (Naxos) were each awarded five-star reviews both in Choir and Organ magazine (the magazine's Star Choice for Livre d'Orgue) and in the French journal Diapason. In 2022 his recording of Elgar's organ works (Naxos) was awarded a Critic's Choice in Gramophone magazine, whilst his recording of Francis Pott's Christus received the same accolade in the American Record Guide.
Program Notes
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Emma Lou Diemer is a noted organist and began playing in church at 13. She ultimately received her Ph.D. in composition from Eastman in 1960, where she studied with Paul Hindemith and David Craighead. Dr. Diemer culminated her career in Santa Barbara, California teaching theory and composition at UCSB from 1971–1991 and serving as organist at First Presbyterian Church. While a student at Eastman, she wrote Fantasie as an entry for a composition contest. Marked Ad libitum–quasi cadenza, it is a brilliant bravura improvisation based on a single motif of short notes followed by a longer one. The piece has no tonal center (although it ends on a C major chord) and comprises many contrasting sections including some passages of lively fugal writing and a wide range of registrations, broken chords, and arpeggiated figures.
The celebrated Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 545, exemplifies the extraordinary peak of sophistication and virtuosity Bach attained while court organist in Weimar (1708–1717). After its original composition, various arrangements by others appeared, including around 1770 the Prelude, Trio, and Fugue in B-flat Major, BWV 545b by Westminster Abbey organist Benjamin Cooke (1734–1794). The principal differences are (1) the transposition down a whole step, possibly to avoid high D in the Prelude and Trio, and (2) the insertion of a middle movement, in this instance an organ transcription of the final Allegro movement of Bach’s G Minor Cello Sonata, BWV 1029 (another arrangement inserted the slow movement of Bach’s C Major Trio Sonata, BWV 529), possibly to compensate for the brevity of the Prelude or to keep in step with the fashionable three-movement Italian concerto form. Furthermore, the three movements are separated by a 14-bar Adagio in dotted rhythm, and a 5-bar recitative-like Tutti, taken from an organ and violin piece, respectively, by Jakob Friedrich Kleinknecht (1720–1794).
In 1843 Schumann took a teaching position at the Leipzig Conservatory which Mendelssohn had founded that same year; however, by 1844 his nerves were in such a state that he suffered a complete breakdown. Accordingly, in December he and his family moved to Dresden. Schumann took with him a pedal attachment for his piano—he had first encountered the device at the Conservatory, where it was introduced as an aid for the organ students—and there composed his Six Canonic Studies, op. 56, comprising six romantic miniatures disguised as canons. Each is built in ABA structure. Nº 4 in A-flat major features a tranquil heartfelt melody accompanied by pulsating chords and a freer impassioned central section. Nº 5 in B minor is in the style of a march with staccato chords and appoggiaturas. On a visit to the Schumanns in August 1845, Mendelssohn heard Clara perform the studies and declared this one “so very elegant.” In Nº 6 a sustained and noble B major adagio is interrupted by a fugal middle section.
Messiaen was admitted to the Paris Conservatory at age 10, and at 22 began his tenure of over sixty years as organist at the Church of La Trinité in Paris. In 1941, after spending a year as a prisoner of war, he was appointed Professor of Harmony, and later Professor of Composition, at the Paris Conservatory until retiring in 1978. As a twenty-year-old student filling in at La Trinité for the ailing organist Charles Quef, Messiaen composed Diptych, his first published organ work. The subtitle, Essay on Earthly Life and Eternal Happiness, clearly defines the two halves of the work and anticipates the dichotomy which pervaded Messiaen’s music throughout his life. Part one (Modéré) pays homage to Messiaen’s teachers, Dupré and Dukas, with extraordinary virtuosity and conventional form, meter, harmony, and registration to depict the confusion and unrest of earthly life. Despite the disjointed movement of a recurring chromatic seven-note theme, the four sections retain a strict tonal plan around C minor (tonic, dominant, subdominant, tonic) with each successive section being a variation of the first using augmentation and ultimately canon. In part two (Très lent) Messiaen transforms the agitated C minor theme from part one into C major to express the “immovable light of joy and peace” of Paradise in one of his most exquisite and ravishing movements. Here, the harmonic language is unmistakably Messiaen’s, based around the octatonic scale which he would later call his second mode of limited transposition. A decade later, he reworked this half for violin and piano as the last movement of his celebrated Quartet for the End of Time.
Judith Bingham was born in Nottingham, England, and has written music since she was a small child. Largely self-taught, she studied both singing and composition at the Royal Academy of Music from 1970–1973 and sang with the BBC Singers for 13 years before resigning in 1996 to compose fulltime. Though not an organist, Bingham is a prolific composer of organ music stemming from her fascination with organ timbre, the human voice, and church acoustics. Suggesting rural Appalachia, her unassuming Mountain Music is intended for a small organ. The work opens nostalgically and features both a Cherokee dance (characterized by repeated notes) and, in the final section, a lyrical folk melody entitled “Old Cumberland Road.” The jagged dotted rhythms of the third section represent the “lumbering” of an “angry bear.”
A native of Essex, England, but resident in France since 1996, Gerald Hendrie is not only a highly accomplished organist but also an outstanding musicologist. He studied organ with Harold Darke, Herbert Howells, and Sir William Harris, and earned his Ph.D. from Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1962. For nearly twenty years he was professor of music at The Open University, the largest university in the United Kingdom. His organ music covers the spectrum of musical language–from mediaeval plainchant to strict dodecaphony to jazz and stride. Last year, Dr. Hendrie completed his most recent organ opus, Six Concert Studies–the first three for the prominent Italian concert organist Andrea Albertin and the last three for Mr. Winpenny. Nº 2 in D minor is a 12/8 scherzo in sonata form that opens with chromatic triplets in the hands against a lyrical duplet chorale on 4’ stop in the pedal. A subsequent ascending theme builds to a fortissimo climax with double pedal. The themes are developed and the scherzo texture returns with both themes recapitulated and ending softly on an open D minor chord. Nº 3 in C-sharp minor is a diabolical toccata with rapid repeated pedal notes accompanied by accented chords à la Prokofiev with canonic and imitative interludes on manuals only. The étude builds to a spectacular conclusion.
Dame Judith Weir was born in Scotland and is one of the most noteworthy composers living in Britain today. In 2014, she became the first woman to hold the position of Master of the Queen’s Music and was one of twelve composers to write music for the recent coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Ettrick Banks was written for Scottish organist Michael Bonaventure, who premiered the piece in August 1985. Weir tells its origin story: “Having always admired the famous Impressionist water studies for piano, I had the idea of writing a water study for organ. This four-minute organ piece is based on the intervals of the traditional Scottish air “Ettrick Banks” (not particularly audible in the finished piece) and seems to describe a more turbulent stretch of water than the French pieces mentioned above.”
Also a Master of the King’s Music, Sir Edward Elgar was mostly self-taught. His father was organist at St. George’s Catholic Church in Worcester, and from age 15, Elgar regularly played for Mass and eventually succeeded his father as organist from 1885–1889. Notwithstanding, he wrote only a handful of organ works. For the 1923 inauguration of a 47-bell carillon (the largest in England) in Queen’s Park, Loughborough, William Wooding Starmer, Professor of Campanology at the University of Birmingham, commissioned Elgar’s Memorial Chimes: Fantasia for Carillon in C major. Shortly afterward Elgar arranged it for organ. Loosely cast in ABAB form, the piece is filled with melancholic charm and juxtaposes slow chordal sections against faster melodic arabesques.
Schoenberg called Schmidt “the last great master of the Romantic era.” Although Schmidt composed nothing for the organ until the last 15 years of his life, his childhood lessons on a an organ built by Klöckner (a student of Gottfried Silberman) in his native Pozsony, Hungary [now Bratislava, Slovakia] impressed upon him admiration for the classical organ. At age 13, his family moved to Vienna where he entered the Conservatory as a cello and piano student and studied composition under Bruckner. From 1896–1911 he was a cellist in the Vienna Philharmonic, directed by Mahler, then became a professor of cello, piano, counterpoint and composition (and ultimately director) at the Vienna Academy. His popular Toccata in C Major is an early work. Franz Schütz, the organ professor at the Vienna Conservatory, successfully premiered it at the Musikverein in Vienna on February 27, 1924, with demands for an immediate encore. The main pentatonic theme is developed with constant motion and fiendishly difficult interplay of percussive chords peppered with rich modulations and surprising transitions, all while increasing in tempo and dynamics to a grandiose coda, where Schmidt introduces the main theme in augmentation.
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Emma Lou Diemer is a noted organist and began playing in church at 13. She ultimately received her Ph.D. in composition from Eastman in 1960, where she studied with Paul Hindemith and David Craighead. Dr. Diemer culminated her career in Santa Barbara, California teaching theory and composition at UCSB from 1971–1991 and serving as organist at First Presbyterian Church. While a student at Eastman, she wrote Fantasie as an entry for a composition contest. Marked Ad libitum–quasi cadenza, it is a brilliant bravura improvisation based on a single motif of short notes followed by a longer one. The piece has no tonal center (although it ends on a C major chord) and comprises many contrasting sections including some passages of lively fugal writing and a wide range of registrations, broken chords, and arpeggiated figures.
The celebrated Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 545, exemplifies the extraordinary peak of sophistication and virtuosity Bach attained while court organist in Weimar (1708–1717). After its original composition, various arrangements by others appeared, including around 1770 the Prelude, Trio, and Fugue in B-flat Major, BWV 545b by Westminster Abbey organist Benjamin Cooke (1734–1794). The principal differences are (1) the transposition down a whole step, possibly to avoid high D in the Prelude and Trio, and (2) the insertion of a middle movement, in this instance an organ transcription of the final Allegro movement of Bach’s G Minor Cello Sonata, BWV 1029 (another arrangement inserted the slow movement of Bach’s C Major Trio Sonata, BWV 529), possibly to compensate for the brevity of the Prelude or to keep in step with the fashionable three-movement Italian concerto form. Furthermore, the three movements are separated by a 14-bar Adagio in dotted rhythm, and a 5-bar recitative-like Tutti, taken from an organ and violin piece, respectively, by Jakob Friedrich Kleinknecht (1720–1794).
In 1843 Schumann took a teaching position at the Leipzig Conservatory which Mendelssohn had founded that same year; however, by 1844 his nerves were in such a state that he suffered a complete breakdown. Accordingly, in December he and his family moved to Dresden. Schumann took with him a pedal attachment for his piano—he had first encountered the device at the Conservatory, where it was introduced as an aid for the organ students—and there composed his Six Canonic Studies, op. 56, comprising six romantic miniatures disguised as canons. Each is built in ABA structure. Nº 4 in A-flat major features a tranquil heartfelt melody accompanied by pulsating chords and a freer impassioned central section. Nº 5 in B minor is in the style of a march with staccato chords and appoggiaturas. On a visit to the Schumanns in August 1845, Mendelssohn heard Clara perform the studies and declared this one “so very elegant.” In Nº 6 a sustained and noble B major adagio is interrupted by a fugal middle section.
Messiaen was admitted to the Paris Conservatory at age 10, and at 22 began his tenure of over sixty years as organist at the Church of La Trinité in Paris. In 1941, after spending a year as a prisoner of war, he was appointed Professor of Harmony, and later Professor of Composition, at the Paris Conservatory until retiring in 1978. As a twenty-year-old student filling in at La Trinité for the ailing organist Charles Quef, Messiaen composed Diptych, his first published organ work. The subtitle, Essay on Earthly Life and Eternal Happiness, clearly defines the two halves of the work and anticipates the dichotomy which pervaded Messiaen’s music throughout his life. Part one (Modéré) pays homage to Messiaen’s teachers, Dupré and Dukas, with extraordinary virtuosity and conventional form, meter, harmony, and registration to depict the confusion and unrest of earthly life. Despite the disjointed movement of a recurring chromatic seven-note theme, the four sections retain a strict tonal plan around C minor (tonic, dominant, subdominant, tonic) with each successive section being a variation of the first using augmentation and ultimately canon. In part two (Très lent) Messiaen transforms the agitated C minor theme from part one into C major to express the “immovable light of joy and peace” of Paradise in one of his most exquisite and ravishing movements. Here, the harmonic language is unmistakably Messiaen’s, based around the octatonic scale which he would later call his second mode of limited transposition. A decade later, he reworked this half for violin and piano as the last movement of his celebrated Quartet for the End of Time.
Judith Bingham was born in Nottingham, England, and has written music since she was a small child. Largely self-taught, she studied both singing and composition at the Royal Academy of Music from 1970–1973 and sang with the BBC Singers for 13 years before resigning in 1996 to compose fulltime. Though not an organist, Bingham is a prolific composer of organ music stemming from her fascination with organ timbre, the human voice, and church acoustics. Suggesting rural Appalachia, her unassuming Mountain Music is intended for a small organ. The work opens nostalgically and features both a Cherokee dance (characterized by repeated notes) and, in the final section, a lyrical folk melody entitled “Old Cumberland Road.” The jagged dotted rhythms of the third section represent the “lumbering” of an “angry bear.”
A native of Essex, England, but resident in France since 1996, Gerald Hendrie is not only a highly accomplished organist but also an outstanding musicologist. He studied organ with Harold Darke, Herbert Howells, and Sir William Harris, and earned his Ph.D. from Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1962. For nearly twenty years he was professor of music at The Open University, the largest university in the United Kingdom. His organ music covers the spectrum of musical language–from mediaeval plainchant to strict dodecaphony to jazz and stride. Last year, Dr. Hendrie completed his most recent organ opus, Six Concert Studies–the first three for the prominent Italian concert organist Andrea Albertin and the last three for Mr. Winpenny. Nº 2 in D minor is a 12/8 scherzo in sonata form that opens with chromatic triplets in the hands against a lyrical duplet chorale on 4’ stop in the pedal. A subsequent ascending theme builds to a fortissimo climax with double pedal. The themes are developed and the scherzo texture returns with both themes recapitulated and ending softly on an open D minor chord. Nº 3 in C-sharp minor is a diabolical toccata with rapid repeated pedal notes accompanied by accented chords à la Prokofiev with canonic and imitative interludes on manuals only. The étude builds to a spectacular conclusion.
Dame Judith Weir was born in Scotland and is one of the most noteworthy composers living in Britain today. In 2014, she became the first woman to hold the position of Master of the Queen’s Music and was one of twelve composers to write music for the recent coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Ettrick Banks was written for Scottish organist Michael Bonaventure, who premiered the piece in August 1985. Weir tells its origin story: “Having always admired the famous Impressionist water studies for piano, I had the idea of writing a water study for organ. This four-minute organ piece is based on the intervals of the traditional Scottish air “Ettrick Banks” (not particularly audible in the finished piece) and seems to describe a more turbulent stretch of water than the French pieces mentioned above.”
Also a Master of the King’s Music, Sir Edward Elgar was mostly self-taught. His father was organist at St. George’s Catholic Church in Worcester, and from age 15, Elgar regularly played for Mass and eventually succeeded his father as organist from 1885–1889. Notwithstanding, he wrote only a handful of organ works. For the 1923 inauguration of a 47-bell carillon (the largest in England) in Queen’s Park, Loughborough, William Wooding Starmer, Professor of Campanology at the University of Birmingham, commissioned Elgar’s Memorial Chimes: Fantasia for Carillon in C major. Shortly afterward Elgar arranged it for organ. Loosely cast in ABAB form, the piece is filled with melancholic charm and juxtaposes slow chordal sections against faster melodic arabesques.
Schoenberg called Schmidt “the last great master of the Romantic era.” Although Schmidt composed nothing for the organ until the last 15 years of his life, his childhood lessons on a an organ built by Klöckner (a student of Gottfried Silberman) in his native Pozsony, Hungary [now Bratislava, Slovakia] impressed upon him admiration for the classical organ. At age 13, his family moved to Vienna where he entered the Conservatory as a cello and piano student and studied composition under Bruckner. From 1896–1911 he was a cellist in the Vienna Philharmonic, directed by Mahler, then became a professor of cello, piano, counterpoint and composition (and ultimately director) at the Vienna Academy. His popular Toccata in C Major is an early work. Franz Schütz, the organ professor at the Vienna Conservatory, successfully premiered it at the Musikverein in Vienna on February 27, 1924, with demands for an immediate encore. The main pentatonic theme is developed with constant motion and fiendishly difficult interplay of percussive chords peppered with rich modulations and surprising transitions, all while increasing in tempo and dynamics to a grandiose coda, where Schmidt introduces the main theme in augmentation.
