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Myself and Peter Almond in familiar surroundings |
One of the joys of advancing years is the accumulation of
memories which can be accessed and replayed at will. Indeed, one of the drawbacks of advancing
years is the tendency to play these memories so extensively that they obscure
the present and obliterate the future.
Aware of this tendency to dwell in the past rather than use it to direct
one’s present actions to the benefit of the future, I try to avoid too much
gratuitous recollection, especially in polite company. But spending a couple of days with my oldest
friend Peter Almond – our friendship goes back over half-a-century – had us
quickly falling into the trap of looking to the past when, ostensibly,
discussing the present. Having presented
Peter with a copy of the Rütti Organ Concerto over which I have enthused both
in this blog and in Gramophone, we
got to discussing the music, the playing and the recording.
The Rütti appears on the Guild Records label and Peter
wondered whether it was in any way connected with the Guild Records which our
mutual boyhood hero, Barry Rose, had founded during those heady days when he
was Choirmaster at Guildford Cathedral.
I was able to tell him that it was, that the enterprising Swiss music
enthusiast, Kaikoo Lalkaka, had bought the whole business and the catalogue,
and while he has been busily increasing its scope to bring in Swiss music as
well as British choral and organ music, unlike some other labels who delete
discs almost as soon as they release them (Priory came up for especially
criticism in our communal rant), Guild continue to make the back catalogue
available, whether they were released by the Barry Rose company or the Kaikoo
Lalkaka one.
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Proof of the Pudding |
Or so I thought.
Peter suggested that, if I was right, then he would be able
to buy the EP recording of one of my old organ teachers, Michael Austin,
playing on the Wimborne Minster organ.
No, I assured him, the current Guild catalogue included no Michael
Austin and comprised original CDs or transfers to CD of former LPs. In any case, I told him, the Michael Austin
record was on the Ryemuse label. Rifling
through his impeccably maintained collection, Peter quickly rooted out the
record in question and, sure enough, it was Michael Austin at Wimborne playing
Bach, Vierne and Francis Jackson on an EP released by Guild Records. I do
have a copy of that record, but my extensive cataloguing system has not yet included
the EPs in my collection and, in any case, it all seems to have been put beyond
my reach for perpetuity following my relocation from Singapore, so I have no
means of checking, but I could swear my copy is not on the Guild label. I am probably wrong.

It seems very much as if those boys who, in the 1960s,
developed a keen interest in the organ, all seem to have bought the same
records. Could it be, we asked ourselves,
that these were the only organ records available? I’m sure not. I remember about that time attending something
at the RSCM in Croydon where Michael Fleming claimed that organ and church
music records were more numerous than any other genre; something I am sure was
not then, nor has ever been, true. But
certainly there were a lot of organ records about. Every trip to a British cathedral netted an
EP of the organist playing the organ there (often remarkably badly), while EMI capitalised
on this with their intriguing, if flawed, “Great Cathedral Organs” series.
Perhaps it’s rose-tinted nostalgia, but I happen to think that
this quintet of organ records was, in every sense of the word, iconic. They not only captured fine organs and fine
organists of the day (something the EMI series did, if at all, only by
accident) but they presented enticing repertoire which offered vivid
entertainment for the enthusiast. I don’t
really see the same enthusiasm for organs generated amongst today’s youth by
the ghastly screeching of Couperin on authentically-restored 17th
century French organs, the nerve-wracking unequal temperaments of wheezy 18th
century North German museum-pieces giving us Bach and Buxtehude as it was
originally heard, or the stomach-churning weightiness of Widor complete
symphonies on a dusty Cavaillé-Coll.
Worthy and important as these are, you do have to attract your audience
before you can lead them in the direction of historical authenticity or
specialist repertoire; something which is often lacking in a lot of organ discs
today.
I certainly would never suggest that organ recordings were
much better in my youth than they are today, but few engender quite the same
level of deep affection among the young.
Well said, Marc! It does concern me that today's youngsters, who rely more and more on downloads, will have, unlike us, very few physical items to prompt their memories in the years to come. I think it was partly the actual format of recorded music (LPs/EPs), coupled to the fact that records were a relatively expensive commodity, that made us treasure our collections all the more highly.
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