REVIEW: Stars & Presentations - Sat 12 July
Christ Church

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Review Published: 17 July 2008
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Christ Church provided the candlelit setting for an atmospheric organ recital by resident organist Ann Burgess. A good audience enjoyed an hour of fluent and sensitive playing.

The programme, on the theme of Stars and Presentations, challenged the listener with Messiaen's haunting L'Apparition de l'Eglise eternelle. The organ more than coped with the composer's highly idiosyncratic palette of sounds. It is a work which invites comparison with Debussy's piano prelude La Cathedrale Engloutie , and highlights the differences between Messiaen's dogmatism and Debussy's poetic style. With its remarkable repetitions, Philip Glass on acid came to mind, despite having been composed 50 years before Glass's minimalist exploits and the discovery of LSD.

Burgess followed with Belgian composer Flor Peeters' The Star proclaims the King is here , an attractive, mellifluous miniature. With so many candles in the church, one was willingly transported to a Christmas scene.

Bach appeared but not obvious Bach. Two chorale preludes showed Burgess's technical skill. I especially enjoyed the second, These are the Ten Commandments . In spite of the slightly heavy Bourdon pedal stop, the balance between oboe sounds of one keyboard and flute stop of the other was ideal, and reminded one forcibly that this combination is capable of so much more Bach than Sheep may safely graze .

Burgess likes to include at least one recent piece. In this case, she played the world premiere of Three Short Serial Pieces for Organ by her son Peter Burgess, a philosophy student.

Few composers have used this difficult abstract method and still produced beautiful music. Peter Burgess's triptych had effective moments and Ann's performances added maternal persuasiveness.

From the obscurer recesses of English organ repertoire – how does she find them? – Burgess dusted off Lemare's Evening , a nostalgic number from a composer more remembered for his opus, Moonlight and Roses . She also played Whitlock's Salix , a plaintively pastoral and folk-like evocation of the weeping willow.

In between these English works we heard Rameau's Entry of the Stars . This fanfare-like piece upped the tempo somewhat and Ann's stylish use of reeds and mixture provided - as with the earlier Messiaen piece - a surprisingly authentic French Grand Jeu.

The programme drew to a close with a return to Messiaen in the centenary year of his birth. The instrument rather than the performer seemed genuinely challenged. The title Dieu est simple , or the “accessibility of God” seemed a tad ironic, given the relative inaccessibility of some of the sounds. The ending, though, was sublime.

The finale saw an uplifting and soothingly tonal Danse by contemporary Algerian organist Naji Hakim. Playing the organ is a labour of love. Thank-you Ann for transporting us, albeit briefly, onto a more ethereal plain.