Get Organised

Usher Hall 29/6/26

John Kitchen (organ)

This was my first experience of the regular Monday lunchtime organ recitals at the Usher Hall, brilliantly advertised as Get Organised! The Edinburgh City Organist, John Kitchen, is well known to EMR readers, for his organ playing, his role as music director of Old St Paul’s Church in the Old Town, his lectures and his accompanying of soloists, including me as recently as last autumn at Dalkeith Palace. My wife and I have known John for 50 years, as he arrived as a very young music lecturer at St Andrews University when we were both undergraduates there. He is a fabulous musician, and a great character, and that character shone out in his introductions to the music he played today in the Usher Hall.

The recital was billed as Music of Four Countries - Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales - although as John said himself, the links were somewhat tenuous. He started with a wonderful Edinburgh Fanfare by Francis Jackson, followed by a Praeludium written in the 1980s when a group of organists, including John, visited Bach’s church in Leipzig, the Thomaskirche. Francis Jackson was in his 60s by then and wrote this prelude in homage to Bach, but in an English style. Mr Jackson died only recently, in 2022, aged 104!

Vaughan Williams and Elgar represented England, and I particularly enjoyed Elgar’s ‘Carissima’, a lovely tune. William Mathias was our Welsh rep, and we heard his quirky ‘Processional’.

Charles Villiers Stanford, although now thought of as doyen of Anglican church music, was actually Irish, and the second piece John played, Postlude in D Minor, brought out the true majesty of the Usher Hall organ. Built when the concert hall was new in 1914, by Norman and Beard, the organ was fully restored in 2002/3 by Harrison and Harrison, and is both a visual and musical treat. John Kitchen has been playing this magnificent instrument since it was refurbished, and knows it inside out, and the final two pieces in the recital revealed many of its glories. Bernard Rose’s palindromic work, ‘Magdalen Bells’, showed us its hushed splendour, while the brilliantly named Grimoaldo Macchia’s ‘Scottish Toccata on Scotland the Brave’ roared out our national song at full power.

The lunchtime organ recitals, mostly by John Kitchen, return on 7, 14, 21 and 28 September. Always on Mondays at 1.10 until 1.50, costing £4, they are a wonderful way to start the week, and I heartily recommend them.