In this RHS-RCO Masterclass, Matthew Martin discusses the practicalities of performance of the French Classical Repertoire – from registration and articulation, to the fingering for ornamentation and the application of inègale.

Ten years ago Will Fraser spotted a market for recordings of keyboard instruments, using the global reach of the internet to find their niche market. “I wanted to produce films that you can’t find on television, knowing there was an audience which would react when word of them arrived on the web. And out of that, Fugue State Films was born.” He talks about the challenges of fundraising and filming Fugue State’s acclaimed organ series, especially the recently released box set on Max Reger, their biggest project so far.

How did Olivier Messiaen combine the creative life with the conventions and strictures of his role as organist? And how can that help us understand and perform his music? In this year’s RCO Organ Forum at the Royal Academy of Music, Artistic Director Robert Sholl brought together academic and performance experts to answer these questions, in a celebration of Messiaen’s work held in this, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the composers’ death.

This year marks the 25th anniversary year of the death of Olivier Messiaen. The quantity and quality of his organ works are remarkable, and, unlike many other major organ composers, Messiaen’s other instrumental works, and choral and orchestral music, place him firmly in the first rank of composers across all genres and periods. Join a team of internationally respected Messaien scholars and interpreters at the RCO’s Organ Forum in October, together with Messiaen’s successor as organist titulaire at the church of La Trinité, to commemorate and celebrate the twentieth century’s greatest composer for the organ.

Privileged access to historic places and instruments is a feature of RCO courses and classes, but it doesn’t get much better than sitting at the sky-blue and gold organ of the Royal Chapel at Versailles. Eleven organists visited Paris to play the Classical French repertoire on instruments of the period on an RCO study trip in June this year, under the tutelage of the organist at the Royal Chapel, Jean-Baptiste Robin.

Composers of the French organ school of the Classical period were meticulous in writing out types of registration. Alexei Panov discusses evidence for the exact composition of Grand Jeu and Plein Jeu registrations, in the light of writings of the time.

In this second video on playing styles, Daniel Moult discusses style and performance practice for the French Baroque school.

Annelies Focquart has investigated some new sources which cast a brighter light on the ten years Belgian organist Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens spent in Britain, as organist, concert performer and teacher, before his return to Belgium in the late 1870s.

Jehan Alain took a fluid view of his music, and very few of his organ works reached the stage of a definitive version in his lifetime.  This confusion has been compounded by discrepancies in published editions of Alain’s work throughout the twentieth century.  Stephen Farr discusses the available sources for selected organ works of Alain, […]