Ettrick Banks Judith Weir (b. 1954) [4:53

To many musicians, the organ inhabits a world apart, as does the musician who plays it. Solitary, intent and supremely resourceful, the organist follows in a long line of remarkable practitioners who have obeyed the peculiar laws and traditions of this world. For the most part, the player of this King of Instruments surveys this kingdom from the hermetical viewpoint of the organ loft.

The organ in the concert hall seems, at first, at a great remove from all this. Yes – the recitalist is in public view – but the audience sees only the player’s back. Even where this disc was recorded, in the neo-gothic grandeur of Edinburgh University’s McEwan Hall, the audience members might feel as if they are privileged to overhear the organist’s intimate outpourings. Perhaps, even when away from its common duty of accompanying voices and playing its role amongst the unchanging liturgy, the organ is associated with musical fare that is inward and recherché. Manymight well judge that the organ reached its apogee as a medium for fugal counterpoint in the hands of Bach and his contemporaries. The subsequent excesses of nineteenth century romanticism seem to have led it almost irredeemably astray, down dubious paths of mass entertainment which also brought about a parallel expansion of tonal resource and players’ technique. Up and down Britain, by the end of the century, Town Halls and Art Galleries were furnished with huge instruments boasting carillons and percussion batteries, purveying transcriptions (to a pregramophone era audience) of everything from symphonies to opera overtures. Round the corner was municipal slavery in the cinema and the crematorium. In the twentieth century some might, again, assert that the great musicians abandoned the King. Apart from the considerable oeuvre of Frenchman Olivier Messiaen (who was an organist himself in the grande tradition) and some astonishing exceptions in the early sixties from Ligeti (‘Volumina’) and Kagel (‘Improvisation Ajoutée’), the organ has not been seen as a medium for the development of advanced techniques.The Swedish organist Karl-Erik Welin (also an actor, amongst other things) instigated many wildly innovative new pieces in the sixties and seventies, and was a figure whose work has been mirrored by Bonaventure in Scotland in the eighties and nineties. However, outwith such timely inspiration, composers have tended to forsake the organ for trendier and less vulnerable technology.

Michael Bonaventure stands in the face of all this. Although he has fulfilled the role of church musician for many years, for him the Anglican Church is not the central pivot of his musical life. He is more sympathetic to the French concept of music in the church, where organ repertoire and the sung liturgy are much more distinct. His reputation rests on his eloquent championing of uncompromising modernism. A composer himself, Michael has also commissioned or coaxed more than 50 new works out of other composers over the last 25 years.These works represent the fracture and eclecticism of style that has occurred during that time.

Michael’s commissions, from many of the most notable creative artists in this country, represent true collaborations which have attempted to bend the voice of this King in directions quite new and at odds with all that is familiar. Elements of virtuosity and showmanship traditionally associated with the instrument remain, rubbing shoulders with avant garde techniques on the one hand and with overtones of church and even cinema on the other.

Avril Anderson wrote Repetitive Strain for a recital Bonaventure gave in St Paul’s Cathedral in 1995. The piece proceeds through a series of textures which might sound familiar to listeners acquainted with the sequential harmonies and repeated figures of the baroque toccata repertory. The fact that these repeating patterns are associated, in this instance, with minimalism does not deny their origins. Here these means serve to create the feeling of anxiety and tension implied by the title, through the deliberate non-resolution of the strong tonal pull of the harmony. That said, there is triumph as well as strain in the grandeur and power of the work’s conclusion. The play of a pair of trumpets over a sonorous bass pedal feels somewhat like the dismissal at the end of a church service in its power and conviction.

Peter Nelson’s On The Beach, first performed in 1997, takes as its starting point the appearance on the shore of a sandy coastal strip of the gargantuan shape of a stranded whale. Most of the piece focuses on the lower registers – the pedals dance with lively African rhythms, as if recalling the whale’s thrashing tail and previous lightness in the water. There are eight sections following each other without a break, which are based on a small group of cell patterns, constantly shifting and sifting around various centres. It is as if we were viewing the gigantic shape on the shore and the play of light upon it from constantly altered perspectives. In the penultimate section, the dancing pedal notes and decisive rising and falling fanfares give way to a gentle peroration reminiscent of African wind chimes.

The two short pieces by Judith Weir were written for recitals given by Bonaventure in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe during the mid 1980s. They have since entered the repertory and have been recorded by several organists throughout the world. This is