OBSERVER: 200 Years of Organ Music
An event, celebrating the 200th Anniversary of Organ Music in Australia, having its beginning with Australia’s very first pipe organ public performance at St David’s Church Hobart on May 15, 1825.
The organ, ordered from London in 1824, and shipped to Tasmania at great expense was the very beginning, where today there is said to be more than 2000 pipe organs installed and in use around Australia.
Where could one celebrate such a milestone? It would have to be on the largest and most expensive musical instrument in the southern hemisphere, the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ.
An acoustic organ containing 9592 pipes, drums and bells and spans three levels of the Melbourne Town Hall. Unveiled in 1929 and refurbished in 2001, highly sophisticated and computer-controlled, capable of producing sounds from a delicate whistle to deafening thunder.
Internationally acclaimed organ virtuoso Thomas Heywood has enjoyed a life-long love affair with the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ, having first played on it as a 16-year-old.
The Celebratory Concert to a packed Melbourne Town Hall and presented by the City of Melbourne, certainly supported all the accolades that Thomas Heywood has been given worldwide.
His very intimate and extensive knowledge of the world’s greatest composers and organists over the centuries, added much to the presentation of his wide ranging program.
He is a prolific transcriber of centuries old works, one in particular that of Frederic Chopin (1810-1849),1842 composition of Polonaise in A-flat major.
He described Chopin as a dreadful organist, unlike his many contemporaries at the time. We were privileged to have Thomas play a composition by Theodore Salome (1834-1896), his Sonata No 1 in C minor for Grand Organ, a composition that has not been played for some 100 years.
A full program that made use of the 4 keyboards, Choir, Great, Swell and Solo and added to that the pedals giving us many works from Strauss, Brahms, Bizet and Tchaikovsky.
As an encore, the Overture to William Tell by Gioachino Rossini, bringing back memories of the introduction to the Lone Ranger serial matinee screenings.
A complete performance to celebrate 200 years of Organ Music in Australia.
Review by Graeme McCoubrie
Pictured: Thomas Heywood, organist