Classical Music: Fireworks And Fanfares

Fireworks & Fanfares
Great American Music Played On The Organ Of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

Fanfare for the Common Man Aaron Copland, arr Thomas R Vozzella; Adagio for strings Samuel Barber, arr William Strickland; Overture to ‘Candide’ – Leonard Bernstein; Walking the dog from Shall we dance George Gershwin, arr Laurent Beekmans; Simple Gifts – Traditional Shaker Melody, arr Vigil Fox; America the beautiful Samuel Ward, arr Marianne Kim; Homage to Fritz Kreisler: Londonderry Air Irish Traditional, arr Robert Hebble; The Stars and Stripes foreverJohn Philip Sousa, arr Stuart Nicholson; Finale from FantasySonata ‘Over the rainbow’ Paul Ayres; Baby Elephant Walk from Hatari Henry Mancini, arr Stuart Nicholson; Ghostbusters – Elmer Bernstein, arr Stuart Nicholson; Cantina Band from Star WarsJohn Williams, arr Matt J Baker; Independence Day [End titles] David Arnold, arr Stuart Nicholson.

Stuart Nicholson and Harry Meehan organ,
Victoria Green alto saxophone/flute
Áine Balfe flute/piccolo
Richard O’Donnell, Bernard Rielly and Dylan Quinn,
percussion David Leigh director

Regent REGCD600
https://www.regent-records.co.uk/

There is something gloriously uninhibited about an organist who opens a recital disc with Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man – percussion hammering off the stone walls of one of Ireland's great Gothic cathedrals – and closes it with the full apocalyptic artillery of David Arnold's score for Independence Day. Stuart Nicholson, Director of Music at St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, clearly enjoys a grand gesture. On this ebulliently programmed St Patrick's Day release on the Regent label, he deploys the historic Willis instrument – four manuals, eighty-one speaking stops, some four thousand pipes – as a kind of one-building orchestra, ranging freely from the Appalachians to the Super Bowl, from Tin Pan Alley to a galaxy far, far away.

The Willis has a distinguished pedigree. Planned by 'Father' Henry Willis himself – who also advised on the instrument at St Paul's Cathedral, London – it was completed after his death by his son in 1902. The powerful reed stops, which Willis senior never lived to hear in situ, blaze magnificently here, and Nicholson's flair for kaleidoscopic registration change – swooping between manuals with the assurance of a conductor changing sections – ensures that the instrument's softer diapasons and luminous strings get their share of the limelight too.

He is joined throughout by a nimble ensemble of collaborators. His organ duet partner Harry Meehan shares the bench for dazzling arrangements of Bernstein's Candide Overture and Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever, the balance between the two players immaculate. Victoria Green contributes suavely on alto saxophone and flute, and Áine Balfe on flute and piccolo, the latter pair being particularly characterful in Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk – music that has no business sounding this excellent on a cathedral organ, yet somehow does. Percussion propels the opening Copland with percussive authority and it returns for the bombastic finale.

Amidst the set-pieces, there is ample space for breathing. Barber's Adagio is given with quiet eloquence, and a wistful arrangement of the Londonderry Air, framed as an homage to Fritz Kreisler, offers one of the disc's more tender moments.

Paul Ayres's Fantasy Sonata Over the Rainbow—a seventeen-minute behemoth in 7/8 that began life as a five-minute commission, but, as the composer cheerfully admits, things got somewhat out of hand. On this album we get the terrific five-minute finale, and by the time the Wizard of Oz's famous tune has been subjected to Ayres's pyrotechnic ingenuity, listeners and players alike will feel they have travelled considerably further than Kansas.

This is an exhilarating, warm-hearted disc with lots of Roman candles in this particular box of fireworks – generous in its ambitions, accomplished in its execution, and irresistible in its sheer enjoyment of a magnificent instrument at full throttle.