Organ Classics from King’s College Cambridge
Stephen Cleobury (organ)
rec. 1993, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge
ALTO ALC1401 [74:00]
A knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours and retirement from a high-profile position held for the best part of four decades has thrust Stephen Cleobury into the limelight. He is certainly hot property for the recording industry right now, and while King’s own label is busily pushing out discs in which he features prominently in his most high-profile role as conductor of the chapel’s world-famous choir, the small Alto label which specialises in re-issuing recordings from the catalogues of now defunct labels, has rooted out this 1993 Collins Classics recording of Cleobury playing popular favourites on the King’s organ which first appeared in 1993 as “The Splendour of King’s”.
It did not get that much attention at the time, and probably were it not for Cleobury’s current headlining status, it would not get much now, for it is merely a collection of the kind of popular organ hits which serve on disc more as tourist souvenirs than serious musical insights for the cognoscenti. In that it does contain all of the old favourite war-horses – from Bach and Widor to Liszt and Vierne, taking in along the way the old signature tune of BBC TV’s Songs of Praise and Messiaen’s Transports de Joie to give it a bit of 20th century street cred.- and lets us hear the old King’s organ in reasonably good form and reasonably passable sound, the re-issue does serve some good.
Cleobury the organist was, certainly in the early 1990s, very much a safe pair of hands (and feet), always secure and polished, always tight-lipped rather than passionate, and placing accuracy over raw excitement. None of these performances would have made it into a collectors’ choice faced with the stiff competition the disc was facing when it was released, and I suspect everyone involved knew it, concentrating instead on the chapel’s distinctive acoustic atmosphere and the associations of the place with musical excellence.
Today, both scholarship and performances have moved on, and many of Cleobury’s interpretations seem rather old-fashioned. Yet elegance and good taste transcend the ephemerality of fashion and even where Bach (Herzlich thus mich verlangen) or Pachelbel (Ciacone) seem more smoochily romantic than 21st century aficionados might like, and some of the pieces (notably the Andante finale from Mendelssohn’s Sixth Sonata and Karg-Elert’s Nun Danket) are less frequently found on popular recital programmes today than they were three decades ago, there is no questioning the care with which Cleobury treats everything. This is a model of fine, well-manicured and highly-disciplined playing which is a valuable historical record on several different levels.
One thing which Alto have brought new to the disc is a strange set of half-researched, half-conjectural and wholly adulatory booklet notes. I am intrigued to learn that Jongen’s Chant de Mai is sometimes spelled Chant de May, not because the French spell May Mai and the English publisher didn’t think the average English organist would know that, but because there may have been “a lady of that name in his life”. I am astonished to learn that Robert Prizeman is “one of the leading composers of the instrument today”, and I am amazed to read that Mendelssohn’s preference for the title Sonata over Voluntary puzzles the writer since they “hardly fit that description”. Nevertheless the notes make for an entertaining read while you let these friendly old favourites and the warm, familiar acoustic of King’s College Chapel echo wash over you.
Marc Rochester
Contents
Louis Vierne (1870-1937) : Carillon from 24 pieces in free style Op.31,No.21 [3.52]
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) : Toccata & Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 [9.12]
Olivier Messiaen (1908-92) : Transports de joie (from L’Ascension) [4.30]
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) : Chorale Preludes - “Herzlich thut mich verlangen” BWV 727 [2.35]; “In dulci jubilo” BWV 608 [1.19]
Robert Prizeman (b. 1952) : Toccata (BBC ‘Songs of Praise‘) [4.24]
Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933) : Chorale Improvisation: “Nun danket alle Gott” Op.65 No.59 [3.52]
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47) : Finale (from Sonata in D Minor Op.65, No.6) [2.42]
Franz Liszt (1811-86) : Prelude & Fugue on the name BACH [13.08]
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) : Ciacone in F Minor [8.51]
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47) : Prelude & Fugue in C Minor op.37, No.1 [6.48]
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) : Chant de Mai, Op.53, No.1 [5.23]
Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) : Toccata from Symphony in F, Op.42, No.5 [6.11]
