The year 1976 brought the 25th Anniversary of the opening of the Royal Festival Hall, and to celebrate this the BBC commissioned a 20-minute work from Peter Racine Fricker for a concert of English music. Fricker chose to write a short single movement symphony, and as an FRCO, he decided to include an organ part. Gillian Weir was invited to be the soloist, and in this article from the RCO Journal of 2017 she describes the event, and also discusses the performance of a later concerto by Fricker, Laudi Concertati, which was dedicated to her.

Sir George Thomas Smart (1776–1867) is not as well known to the general musical public as he should be, not least because he was the first British musician to wield a baton over his forces and the first to take sole charge of a musical performance. The famous and misleading quote in the title is one of the most widely known anecdotes from his life, but this humorous aside does not reflect Smart’s attitude to the organ and its music in 1851, nor his reforming zeal.

The RCO’s toes are still tapping after spending a day with the Troxy Wurlitzer in January, in the company of our colleagues of the Cinema Organ Society. Young Theatre Organist of the Year 2016, Lewis Scott, was also there, and he talks about winning the competition, how he manages to practise, and his plans for the future.

Sidney Campbell was appointed Organist of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in 1961, and went to considerable lengths to ensure the Harrison & Harrison organ there met his exacting criteria.  Relf Clark studied with Campbell at St George’s, and gives an outline of Campbell’s career and achievements.

In 1927, Elizabeth Campbell travelled to England from her home in Melbourne, Australia, to study organ and conducting at the Royal College of Music in London with Henry Ley. She became one of Australia’s leading organists, but always dreamed of going back to London. In 1933 her dream came true and she was invited back by the RCM as part of their Jubilee Celebrations. She kept a diary of this remarkable year’s visit, which survived, and has been transcribed and published by Robert Cox, a close friend of her family.

Christopher Anderson discusses perceptions of Max Reger as an organist rather than composer, and the layers of assumptions which grew around the composer during his lifetime as to his status as organ virtuoso.

The copy used for this digital edition comes from the RCO Library, and is part of the RCO’s on-going project to digitise and publish online its collection of rare eighteenth and early nineteenth century music. You can read more on the edition used, and also a little more on Theophania Cecil’s life and music, below, in an article by Andrew McCrea and RCO Librarian Frances Pond.

By studying Western classical music at mission schools and at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, Fela Sowande developed a keen interest in composing for the organ. Godwin Sadoh discusses the European, African-American and Nigerian/African influences on ten of Sowande’s most popular organ works.

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.