Check Out The Organ!
Ventured out yesternight for an organ-themed concert featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Robin Stapleton. It turned out to be quite a fun evening. The HM and I grabbed a quick dinner at Daquise, a Polish restaurant on Thurloe Street just next to the South Kensington Tube station, before heading to the Royal Albert Hall, which was packed to capacity.
Looking at the number of silver haired audience members there, it marked a huge contrast to those I encountered just days earlier at the Dave Matthews gig. The HM and I don’t think of ourselves as bright young things anymore, but I can certainly vouch that our presence there last night served definitely to lower the average age of the place.
OK, so I don’t intend to be mean. For it was the organ I was hungering after. The huge and massive erection right behind the orchestral stage, visible throughout the circular performance venue. I think I might have encountered organ music in old baroque churches before, but never have I beheld its full splendour and glory as I did last night.
I love the organ, the king of instruments. I love how it so dominates every other instrument with its deep, rich and sonorous tones. You might even have the entire brass section blasting away, but once the first note of the organ keyboard is pressed, you know who’s boss. It’s unfair. One man on an organ can drown and out perform a hundred-strong orchestra.
The concert was staged to mark the third anniversary of the completion of restoration works for Albert Hall’s grand organ and featured familiar works for solo organ or organ and orchestra, such as Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D, Saint-Saën’s Organ Symphony, Albinoni’s Adagio, Walton’s Crown Imperial, and Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary.
But the one chief reason which drew me there was Widor’s amazing Toccata from his Fifth Symphony. Wah piang man. Organ music at its purest and finest, and it was a shame that the RPO chose to perform a version adulterated by entirely extraneous orchestral accompaniment. Not familiar with the Toccata? Check out this amateur clip from YouTube – without which life on the Internet would be so much worse : (
The closing work, and, if I may mix my metaphors, the one which brought the house down and which made everyone rise to their feet, was Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, also known as Land of Hope and Glory, when performed as a choral piece. You can’t get more patriotic and British when this is sung, especially at famous occasions such as the Last Night of the Proms, from which this clip is extracted. When the music reaches its height, the entire house explodes in utter unison – a stirring display of partisan national loyalties and of good fun.
It’s one of those works, I guess, so deeply ingrained into the British psyche, that everyone was able to rise up and bellow out the words from memory. OK, the HM and I stood there stupidly, looking decidedly out of place, mouths definitely silent, while everyone around us – literally everyone – rose up, chest out, intoning those words to the Land of Hope and Glory.
What do we have in comparison? Errr, Stand Up for Singapore? Count On Me Singapore? One People, One Nation, One Singapore? Let’s not even go there. I know we’re a much younger nation, but still…. The National Day songs in recent years have been composed as pop hits, not really the marching, martial hymns most suited for mass singings. We have a long way to go before such alternative anthems can successfully emerge.
But back to last night. This was the second time we found ourselves at the Albert Hall amidst a rendition of Land of Hope and Glory. The only fair thing to do was to head back and google the lyrics. It’s a lengthier piece, but here’s the main knock-em-dead bit:
Looking at the number of silver haired audience members there, it marked a huge contrast to those I encountered just days earlier at the Dave Matthews gig. The HM and I don’t think of ourselves as bright young things anymore, but I can certainly vouch that our presence there last night served definitely to lower the average age of the place.
OK, so I don’t intend to be mean. For it was the organ I was hungering after. The huge and massive erection right behind the orchestral stage, visible throughout the circular performance venue. I think I might have encountered organ music in old baroque churches before, but never have I beheld its full splendour and glory as I did last night.
I love the organ, the king of instruments. I love how it so dominates every other instrument with its deep, rich and sonorous tones. You might even have the entire brass section blasting away, but once the first note of the organ keyboard is pressed, you know who’s boss. It’s unfair. One man on an organ can drown and out perform a hundred-strong orchestra.
The concert was staged to mark the third anniversary of the completion of restoration works for Albert Hall’s grand organ and featured familiar works for solo organ or organ and orchestra, such as Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D, Saint-Saën’s Organ Symphony, Albinoni’s Adagio, Walton’s Crown Imperial, and Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary.
But the one chief reason which drew me there was Widor’s amazing Toccata from his Fifth Symphony. Wah piang man. Organ music at its purest and finest, and it was a shame that the RPO chose to perform a version adulterated by entirely extraneous orchestral accompaniment. Not familiar with the Toccata? Check out this amateur clip from YouTube – without which life on the Internet would be so much worse : (
The closing work, and, if I may mix my metaphors, the one which brought the house down and which made everyone rise to their feet, was Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, also known as Land of Hope and Glory, when performed as a choral piece. You can’t get more patriotic and British when this is sung, especially at famous occasions such as the Last Night of the Proms, from which this clip is extracted. When the music reaches its height, the entire house explodes in utter unison – a stirring display of partisan national loyalties and of good fun.
It’s one of those works, I guess, so deeply ingrained into the British psyche, that everyone was able to rise up and bellow out the words from memory. OK, the HM and I stood there stupidly, looking decidedly out of place, mouths definitely silent, while everyone around us – literally everyone – rose up, chest out, intoning those words to the Land of Hope and Glory.
What do we have in comparison? Errr, Stand Up for Singapore? Count On Me Singapore? One People, One Nation, One Singapore? Let’s not even go there. I know we’re a much younger nation, but still…. The National Day songs in recent years have been composed as pop hits, not really the marching, martial hymns most suited for mass singings. We have a long way to go before such alternative anthems can successfully emerge.
But back to last night. This was the second time we found ourselves at the Albert Hall amidst a rendition of Land of Hope and Glory. The only fair thing to do was to head back and google the lyrics. It’s a lengthier piece, but here’s the main knock-em-dead bit:
Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?Wider still, and wider, shall thy bounds be set;God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!
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