Here is something a little out of the ordinary – this morning’s organ voluntary at Westminster Cathedral was an organ duet version of Jupiter from Holst’s Planets Suite. The video includes a walk-through the Cathedral’s galleries and ends up at the Grand Organ Console with the two players, Assistant Master of Music, Peter Stevens and the Organ Scholar Ed Symington.
5 Replies to “Holst’s Jupiter at Westminster Cathedral”
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Thank you, Charles! I was never able to visit the gallery when I was there 33 years ago.
Very cool!
Brilliant! I wonder if the world can possibly imagine the permutations of risk for:
Tangling of hands, especially when changing among four manuals.
Tripping over each other's feet.
Conflict with three swell pedals, all those pistons!
Never mind your commanding musicality and the ingenuity of the arrangement. Whose is it btw?
Joseph Cullen
Technically excellent and very well-performed, undoubtedly, but…………this is a concert piece! What liturgical relevance does it have to the Mass? When oh when will Catholic organists endeavour to consistently play liturgically sensitive postludes rather than recital/concert pieces? A profoundly appropriate choice for yesterday's postlude would have been the Fantaisie-Paraphrase from Office No. 9 for the second Sunday after Epiphany, from Charles Tournemire's "L'Orgue Mystique" (1927-32) which is the only truly monumental cycle of liturgical organ music ever composed – period !! In this year which, on 4th November, will mark the 75th anniversary of Tournemire's untimely and rather mysterious death, we all need to do something to promote this wonderful music which has sadly been almost completely lost in the mists of time………….
I have a strong suspicion (I'm involved with the cathedral but wasn't there) that this was a farewell gift to the much-loved and finally-really-retiring Fr Michael Durand, whose last mass as an assistant chaplain to the cathedral that was – you can see him being assisted up to the altar at the beginning.
Liturgically and seasonally appropriate programming of the kind of thing you suggest does regularly feature at the Cathedral.