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BES Annual Meeting 2007
Organ Recital
Organist Kevin Bowyer: Biography
Kevin Bowyer was born in Southend-on-Sea in January 1961 and studied with Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, David Sanger, Virginia Black and Paul Steinitz. He has won first prizes in five international organ competitions and has gained a reputation for playing unusual and new music and for taking on “impossible” projects. In 1987 he gave the world premiere of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s two hour solo Symphony for Organ, considered “impossible” ever since its publication in 1925. Other UK premieres have included works by Brian Ferneyhough (Sieben Sterne), Michael Finnissy (Second Organ Symphony), Anthony Gilbert (Halifenu Vine Dance), Iain Matheson (Background Music), Charles Wuorinen (Natural Fantasy), Milton Babbitt (Manifold Music) and Iannis Xenakis (Gmeeoorh). Sorabji’s massive Second Organ Symphony (1929-32, about 6½ hours) is scheduled for performance in 2008.
At home Kevin has played solo and concerto concerts in most of the major venues and festivals. Trips and tours abroad have taken him throughout Europe, North America, Australia and Japan. In summer 2003 he played the complete solo organ Symphonies of Widor and Vierne and the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in three concerts in the same week, 16 hours of music, at St. Giles, Cripplegate.
Kevin has released a great number of solo CDs, many of which have won awards. These include many landmark recordings of contemporary music as well as the complete organ music of J S Bach and music by Alkan, Brahms, Schumann, Reubke, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Messiaen, Alain, etc. Jonathan Wearn, writing in MusicWeb International, described him as “one of the world’s hardiest and most formidable virtuosos… probably Britain’s most formidable organist…” and Gramophone magazine described him as “unique”.
He is a popular teacher, working for the St. Giles International Organ School and at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Kevin has lectured and given masterclasses in many countries and appears regularly on the staff of the Oundle Summer School for Young Organists. He is Organist to the University of Glasgow and runs an extensive recital series there which includes many new commissions. Performances of works by Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, Charles Camilleri, Paul Ayres, Haflidi Hallgrímsson, Claude Loyola Allgén and Jan Vriend are planned for 2007/8.
His article, “Twentieth Century European Organ Music – A Toast”, cast as a play set in a Cotswolds pub, in the Incorporated Association of Organists’ Millennium Book was described by one reviewer as “quite simply the best piece of writing on organ music that I have ever seen.” Kevin’s other interests include reading widely, obscure cinema, real ale, malt whiskies and looking at the sea. His favourite pastime is sleeping.
Organ History
Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) J S Bach (1685-1750)
A Church Service interrupted by a Thunderstorm David Clegg (1867-1923)
Badinage Ronald Watson (b. 1936)
Basso Ostinato Dick Koomans (b. 1957)
The chapel organ is one of the very best instruments of its type in the country. It was built in 1927 by Henry Willis III and overhauled, with the addition of 19 new stops, by Harrison & Harrison in 2005. Played from a console with three manuals and pedals, it is capable of a tremendous array of sounds from the most ethereal to the floorshakingly volcanic, all of which will be evident from the programme played today.
Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the most recognisable piece in the organ repertoire, hardly needs an introduction. Familiar from many horror films, it has also been transcribed several times for piano solo and even by Stokowski for Walt Disney’s film, Fantasia.
Back in the days before the cinema, cities and major towns often employed a town hall organist who would entertain the masses with organ concerts consisting largely of arrangements of the popular classics. They would also improvise narrative pieces and the depiction of storms in particular became hugely popular in the 19th century (a CD recording of seven such works including the Clegg, played by Kevin Bowyer at the organ of Blackburn Cathedral, is available at today’s concert). David Clegg was a popular concert organist in the early years of the 20th century and his Church Service interrupted by a Thunderstorm is so specific in its sound effects that it needs no descriptive assistance whatsoever, other than that the service in question appears to be an Evensong. First we hear the bells of the church, then the bells of another church off in the distance. The clock strikes six, the organ music begins, the minister intones the Preces and the first hymn strikes up. Then…
Ronald Watson was born in Thornaby on Tees and has had a busy life as a choir director and church organist. His organ music in particular has become quite popular and his little Badinage (playful banter) is a happy, affectionate and memorable piece. It was nicknamed by the chapel choir at a recent service, The Baptism Polka.
Dutchman Dick Koomans, an organ builder by profession, has also produced a number of organ pieces, of which this is the most popular. It is decidedly secular in nature, full of the sound of jazz and saxophones. The ground bass referred to in the title is a repeating bass line introduced solo at the outset and running through much of the piece. The bullish confidence is temporarily subdued in the middle where the music seems to drown its sorrows in a midnight Amsterdam wine bar before surfacing again to finish with a jazz trumpet solo and a blaze of full brass.
Kevin Bowyer
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