Tom Winpenny organ
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC 0724
John Gardner is one of the many British 20th century composers who have not really received the public attention that they deserve. This is in no way a complaint, but certainly, the last quarter of the 20th century was dominated by the New Music Manchester, with names such as Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr and John Ogden. Their contribution as composers, and, in Ogden’s case, an executant, was distinctive.
The music was highly characterised and perhaps more attractive to those whose responsibility it was to find contemporary music that could form part of, say, a festival concert. One example that comes to mind is Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy which received its first performance at the Aldeburgh Festival of 1968.
Of the group mentioned above, only Maxwell Davies made a contribution to the organ repertoire with a Sonata, Three Organ Voluntaries and the Fantasia on O Magnum Mysterium. However, it is doubtful whether, viewed in the context of the rest of his varied output, the works for organ could be regarded as typical. Gardner’s training in composition began when he was a pupil at Wellington School under Walter Stanton and both Walton and Arthur Benjamin are mentioned in the excellent note contributed by Chris Gardner and Tom Winpenny, as being influential, as is Sir Thomas Armstrong. His major breakthrough came in 1951, when Barbirolli agreed to conduct his first Symphony at the Cheltenham Festival.
In Gardner’s case the organ music is a recognisable part of his work as a whole and does not stand apart from it, as I suggested that Maxwell Davies’s organ music might be so regarded. The forms he chose to use place it firmly in the classical tradition, with the substantial Fantasia and Fugue on a Prelude of Anton Bruckner Op 185 (1989) being perhaps the most obvious example.
The musical language is rooted in tonality and his scrupulous craftsmanship is everywhere apparent. This is only the most recent of Tom Winpenny’s excellent recordings, many of them for Toccata Classics. His gift for being able to project such uncompromising repertoire is extraordinary and the organ of Christchurch Priory sounds splendid.
Anyone with an interest in recent British music should investigate this disc. Too often music for the organ is regarded as specialised, to put it kindly, and it is the work of composers like John Gardner that helps to bring it out of the artistic ghetto to which many would be happy to consign it. I very much look forward to Volume Two when it appears.
Review by Martyn Strachan