St Chad's, Birmingham

[pdsfd]

I attended Mass here today and have to say the organ sounds superb; it has recently had a mid-life refurbishment and an already impressive sounding instrument now sounds even better. There were some sounds which I've never heard from an organ before, despite regularly attending Salford Cathedral with its very versatile Makin and excellent organist. This seems even more impressive given the console is modest in size for a cathedral organ.

A lot of credit to the excellent organist (Nigel Morris?) too; a magnificent voluntary at the end which I think was an improvision of 'O God our help in ages past' (the recessional hymn) and a beautiful reflective piece (don't know the name) after the choir had finished the Communion motet. I should add too that the choir were excellent - well done to the whole music team at St Chad's!

[mcb]

A lot of credit to the excellent organist (Nigel Morris?) too; a magnificent voluntary at the end which I think was an improvisation of 'O God our help in ages past' (the recessional hymn)

I wonder if he played the (misnamed) 'St Anne' Fugue by Bach? It's what Anthony usually played when we sang O God our help at Salford. No doubt he still does!

[pdsfd]

A lot of credit to the excellent organist (Nigel Morris?) too; a magnificent voluntary at the end which I think was an improvisation of 'O God our help in ages past' (the recessional hymn)

I wonder if he played the (misnamed) 'St Anne' Fugue by Bach? It's what Anthony usually played when we sang O God our help at Salford. No doubt he still does!

It wasn't the Bach I don't think; he started off gently and gradually built up and I'm guessing finished with the full organ, with particularly heavy use of the pedals towards the end of the piece. The tempo towards the end was also quite a bit slower than the tempo at the end of the Bach piece; it did 'feel' more like an improvisation really. The psalm was also rounded off impressively with a fairly substantial improvisation, which I don't think I've come across before (improvising at the end of a standard psalm setting that is).