I play for Margaret Phillips on the Frobenius organ at The Queen’s College, Oxford /Simon Williams

Slightly daunting to have a lesson on Bach with Margaret Phillips after her exemplary Bach recital the night before – and on the same organ too. But she was generous in sharing the registrations she used, and many other small elements that go to make up her outstanding performances.

Great to Pedal is an English invention, she admonished one of us – this organ is perfectly balanced throughout and doesn’t need it. (This organ being the 1965 Frobenius at The Queens College, Oxford, a typical organ reform movement instrument, with individual casework for all the divisions, and the pedals in completely separate towers either side.)   When someone tentatively suggested a registration of 8′ + 2′ she said that they probably didn’t use it in Bach’s time –  it doesn’t really work on historic instruments.

Much of the lesson was taken up by finding suitable speeds for pieces, and maintaining them. Any Bach fugue is basically allegro, said Margaret – and trills are often easier if the piece is that little bit faster. A draggy pedal line doesn’t help – keep the notes short – a good way to get a sense of the level of articulation needed between the notes is to play the pedal line on a manual, with just one finger.

We spent some time on the suspirans figure (a three note upbeat) – which occurs all over Bach, for example in Leibster Jesu, wir sind hier BWV 731, which I was playing.  Make a tiny lift BEFORE the strong beat she said. This feels slightly counter intuitive, but she’s absolutely right, and I’m practising this in now.

Listening to Margaret, Thomas Trotter, Graham Barber playing this week, it’s tempting to believe that they must inhabit a sunlit plateau free of the worries that bedevil lesser organists.  I asked Margaret how she managed to keep her playing so intense and precise right through to the end of the recital. ”The B minor Prelude and Fugue (BWV544) I have played a lot of times”, she said, “so it was a good one to end on. And the chorale preludes in the middle of the recital were slow, so they gave me a little bit of a breather.”

Earlier in the course I asked Thomas Trotter  how he knew a piece was ready for performance, and wouldn’t have weak moments.   “Well I’m City Organist for Birmingham, so I can try things out at Town Hall Recitals where I’m not nervous of making a mistake” he said (!) But he did add – yes, it is a problem for all of us.   His advice to us was to record ourselves to add a bit of pressure, play pieces as voluntaries if we are church organists: – there are no magic answers it seems, just commonsense and lots of practice.

Margaret Phillips studied with Ralph Downes and Marie-Claire Alain, and quickly gained an international reputation as a soloist after her Royal Festival Hall debut. Alongside her busy concert career she has been a member of the Council of the Royal College of Organists, and President of the Incorporated Association of Organists. She is currently Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music in London. She regularly gives masterclasses at home and abroad and has served on international competition juries.   Her critically acclaimed recordings include the completely organ works of Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens and Stanley, and in March 2012 the final volume of her recordings of the complete organ works of Bach was released – the first two CDs received 5 star reviews and have been hailed as some of the finest performances of Bach chorale preludes on disc.   Margaret’s website is here.

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Thomas Trotter gets double-booked

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Sleeping at Merton

Ralph Downes and the Royal Festival Hall organ

Marie-Claire Alain – Maitresse de l’orgue

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James Parsons (photo credit: Timothy Easter)

James Parsons is teaching us in Oxford this week, and even persuaded us today that transposition and harmonisation at sight were great fun – well almost.   He’s an enormously busy recitalist and teacher – organ tutor at the Birmingham Conservatoire and the RCO Academy Organ School, and Head of Student Development for the Royal College of Organists.  As soon as our course is over he’s running Set Your Sights! – an inspirational course giving teenage organists a taste of the organ scholar experience.  (More details at the bottom of the page.)   Inamongst he has managed to fit in an interview for the blog – and here are his answers to my five questions:

Which piece of music are you studying at the moment and why?
César Franck’s Prière—dusky, musky and hauntingly captivating—vying, in my view, for ‘Franck’s best piece’ with his Fantaisie-idylle in A.  I’ve long been aware of this alluring music, with its Wagnerian harmonic landscape, and have ‘hacked through’ it in private many times in the past, though back-burnering it as a shrine to visit with due observance in the future.  An encounter to one of Cavaillé-Coll’s three finest, happily unaltered, instruments last summer—that at St Étienne in Caen—alerted me that years are just slipping by and the time for learning Priére (that’s just ‘fingering’, yer know!) had come: had just been ravished by those fonds! But how did Franck really stretch those huge chords and play legato, well-endowed though we know he was! Not prepared to discuss my own endowments on your blog, Morwenna, but am enjoying devising ‘ways and means’! Happily, this week based in Oxford and with some free time between classes, I can spend time practising at my own College, Exeter, where I was Organ Scholar way back in the last Millennium—and  gain surrogate inspiration from the faux-Cavaillé in our  Sainte-Chapelle-inspired College shrine. A senior moment, of sorts!!

What has been your best experience as an organist?
Recently—the warmth of reception and huge audiences I experienced for two recitals I gave in Russia (Moscow RC Cathedral, and Kazan Conservatorium): sincere emotional response coupled with perceptive critique.

What has been your worst experience as an organist?
Oh—the start of the Albinoni Adagio—programmed at Oundle international Festival with strings under the baton of a mature conductor/ pianist/ broadcaster delivering his downbeat without reference to the monitor to verify I’d reached the console.

What’s the best piece of advice you were given by an organ teacher?  (and who was it?)
“Mind your back” (the late, great George Miles—my second ever lesson at the age of 10) – referring, I think, to the importance of good posture at the console!  George deserves much greater recognition for his enlightenment back in the 1950s to ’80s, for his accomplished playing, and his hugely prescient influence as a teacher.   (For more on George Miles see George Miles WikipediaWikipedia.)

What would be your own best piece of advice for student organists?
Learn oodles of repertoire as soon as you can (but properly—that’s just ‘fingering’, yer know!)  The younger you are when you engage with new pieces the more deeply they’ll settle.

SET YOUR SIGHTS!  based in Merton College this Saturday 12th April, gives teenage organists a taste of what it is like being an organ scholar: playing the organ, singing, and directing a choir.  Tutors this year alongside James are Margaret Phillips, Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music, and one of today’s foremost recording artists, and Jeremy Summerley, Sterndale Bennett Lecturer in Music at the Royal Academy of Music, and a renowned choral conductor on the national stage.  Students will sing, conduct and play the organ in a service of Choral Evensong at the end of the day (5pm in Merton College Chapel) which is open to all.  For future courses keep an eye on the events page, or the RCO website.

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Thomas Trotter gets double-booked

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Sleeping at Merton

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The Queen wore apricot (our fashion correspondent writes) with a hat in a perfect matching shade to her coat – but she does have the best milliners in town.  Her lady-in-waiting wore turquoise.  We were all looking surprisingly gorgeous ourselves, having been held to a strict dress code of daytime smartness.  However you could still tell you were in a room full of organists, though I’m not entirely sure why.   Maybe it’s because we are all comfortable with ceremony – or just our generally pasty complexions from hours of squinting at Bach.

Thomas played brilliantly, completely at ease with the situation – which included a relay onto a large video screen right in front of Her Majesty.  “However you might play it yourself, he convinces you that his performance is exactly how the piece should go” was a comment afterwards.   His recital is just one of the RCO’s 150 for 150 challenge series – and you can join him.   The College wants organists of all ages and abilities to sign up to a celebratory series of 150 recitals in this their 150th year.   I’ve been told they are just 10 short of the total.   Whether you are an international star or known only to yourself – find more information here.

UPDATE Thursday:   This is a bit of a novelty for organists: we were considered important enough for a write up in the Daily Mail  (with some nice pictures).  But remember you read it here first.

St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle /Josep Renalias

The organ at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, has a long history and at one stage was rebuilt with two consoles which could be played both simultaneously and independently.  When this mechanism started to fail in the 1960s Harrison & Harrison performed another rebuild, followed by further renovations and a new piston mechanism in 2002.  Specifications can be found here.

RCO Easter Course 2014 – a lesson with Margaret Phillips

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Sleeping at Merton

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Dobson Op91 Organ, Merton College Oxford. The view from the organ bench

Woo hoo!  Pardon an adolescent outburst, but I’ve just had an hour playing the new Merton Dobson organ, and after all I’ve written about it on this blog, it was a fab moment.  Here’s the view straight up from the organ bench (and yes of course I played the Zimbelstern – who could resist?)

The RCO Easter Course starts properly tomorrow, but anyone who could get here tonight got the keys to college organs around Oxford, so it was hunt the ON switch time in several dark organ lofts and chapels.  Pembroke’s modest switch hidden inside the panelling had me baffled for quite a while, as did the duplex switch at Jesus, which turned the humidifier OFF as the organ went ON, which sounded of course as if you had just switched the organ blower OFF.   But a happy evening was spent on the lovely Letourneau at Pembroke, and the equally fine Drake organ at Jesus.  Here they are.

Jesus College Chapel, Oxford. The 1993 William Drake organ

The 1995 Letourneau organ in Pembroke College Chapel

We are staying in Merton College, and that takes a little getting used to.  In my day Merton (along with most other colleges) was strictly men only. The only time women were officially tolerated overnight at a men’s college was during a College Ball.   After a Ball it was considered a bit of a trophy statement for the men to bring their partner into college breakfast the next morning. (Us girls were usually pretty bedraggled by then, with smudged mascara and a collapsed ballgown, and frankly, greasy bacon and eggs were not exactly top of the agenda, but we generally went along with it.)  Otherwise “staying in Merton” meant only one thing – misbehaviour.   Gates were locked at 10pm, and by this time we were all supposed to be back in our own virginal beds. Fat chance – freshers were quickly educated in the ways of sneaking in and out of locked colleges, bypassing the Porters’ Lodge.  I have climbed over the 20 foot high wrought iron gates at the back of Magdalen College more than once – as this was in the heyday of Laura Ashley and Annabelinda, I was in flimsy sandals and a full length frock covered with flounces which would catch on any spike going.  In the dark, and slightly the worse for wear, feeling tiny froglets squishing between my toes with every step as I stumbled through the water meadows back to my own college is a fine Oxford memory.

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Thomas Trotter gets double-booked

First performances on Dobson Op91 at Merton College, Oxford

Update on Dobson Op91 at Merton College, Oxford

A Dobson organ from Iowa comes to Merton College, Oxford

The post RCO Easter Course 2014 – Sleeping at Merton appeared first on The Lady Organist.

The Royal College of Organists runs an Easter Course for those preparing for their examinations, so I’m off to Oxford this week on the Preparation for ARCO strand – tutors Graham Barber,  Margaret Phillips, Thomas Trotter (gulp) as well as our regular RCO tutors.  We will be staying at Merton College, playing the new Dobson Op91 (can’t wait), and I’ll be blogging every day.  Links will appear below.

picture credits: Bridge of Sighs/Tom Murphy VII, Oxford Lane/Doc Searls, Merton Dobson Op91/Dobson Organ Builders

RCO Easter Course 2014 – a lesson with Margaret Phillips

Five Questions for…..James Parsons

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Thomas Trotter gets double-booked

RCO Easter Course 2014 – Sleeping at Merton

The post Join me on the RCO Easter Course, Oxford, April 2014 appeared first on The Lady Organist.