An online recital by Martin Schmeding of German organ music 1870-1940, on the Ladegast-Sauer-Eule organ of the Nikolaikirche, Leipzig.

It may seem slightly perverse to be looking performance skills in Learning during Lockdown, when the coronavirus pandemic currently preventing most musicians from performing at all.  But lockdown is possibly an opportunity to step back and reflect on how we felt about our own performances in the past, and how they could improve.  iRCO has resources on performance techniques, and we look at competitions for organists that are still taking place in the next year.

Listen to the Ede & Ravenscroft Recital which closed the College’s 2020 Conferment of Diplomas ceremony, performed by Anne Page, which included works by Bach, Daniel Roth, Judith Weir and Olivier Messiaen.

Over sixty years ago, the Musicians’ Company, one of the historic livery companies of the City of London, inaugurated a scholarship in memory of the great Victorian concert organist, W T Best. This year the award has been renamed The Musicians’ Company Award for Organists, and candidates between the ages of 18 and 26 are invited to apply: the deadline for this is the end of February 2020.

Performers from six European countries will come together in Westminster Cathedral on 20th November, to perform the UK premiere of Jean Guillou’s spectacular La Révolte des Orgues, a 25-minute piece for percussion, and no fewer than nine organs.  Some of the musicians have played La Révolte before, but not all, and rehearsal time is limited, starting on 17th November, when Viscount Organs will install seven digital instruments, to add to the Cathedral’s Apse and Grand pipe organs.

Ivan-Bogdan Reincke, 21, from Hungary has won first prize in the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition (NIIOC), held at St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, Armagh, in August this year. This is the ninth year of the NIIOC, and this year competitors came from the USA and Australia for the first time, as well as six European countries.

This year’s OrganFest in Cardiff is offering a perfect opportunity to introduce youngsters to the organ. David Pipe on the organ with John Biddle as narrator, along with Jeremy Sampson, curator of the WOOFYT, present all sorts of wizardry and magic in a concert for the whole family on the morning of Saturday, 7th September.

Art Night is a free, contemporary art festival, taking place over one night, once a year, in a different area of London.  This year the festival is on the night of Saturday 22nd June, in Walthamstow and King’s Cross in North London. Cory Archangel and Hampus Lindwall have been invited to create an event for the festival based around the organ at the church of St Mary, in Walthamstow.

In a welcome re-balancing of the customary recital series, the line-up for the John Hill Organ Series at St Lawrence Jewry, London, which has just begun, is composed solely of female organists.  It coincides with the launch earlier this year of the Society of Women Organists in the UK, an organisation dedicated to promoting women in the organ world, and recruiting girls and women to study the organ.