SKU: ST.H449

ISBN 9790220221286.

A well-known teacher and compiler of Stainer & Bell's Opera Gala series, John Norris has created Wedding Gala with an ear to giving church organists a mix of favourites and exciting discoveries to brighten the routine of music for the service of holy matrimony.

No album would be complete without the traditional wedding music of Mendelssohn and Wagner, and it can be found here in this collection alongside other classics of the wedding repertoire by Jeremiah Clarke, Bach and Handel. But there's also a thoroughly contemporary leavening, with arrangements of Sydney Carter's One More Step and Lord of the Dance, both firm favourites, plus Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Charpentier's Prelude, adding a note of splendour.

But the real bonus is for lovers of English music, with Elgar's Chanson de Matin and 'The Call' from the Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, seldom found in comparable collections. And there's also a rare new discovery: the ravishing Chosen Tune by Herbert Howells, transcribed from his Three Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 28, and available as an organ piece for the first time.

Each piece is comprehensively registered by the arranger, and the collection as a whole will be welcomed by all organists of intermediate standard as a source of new material not only for liturgical use but also for recitals.

SKU: SU.80101403

Symphony for Organ (2013) is cast as a dramatic progression from darkness into light. The first movement, Masque, is extremely violent and bleak. The title is used with a touch of irony--for this is not a masque of courtly diversion, but rather a furious struggle against the darkness, played out in a series of dramatic episodes following a Tudor-era formal design. The ending builds to a dramatic peak, and leaves us in shell-shocked silence. The second movement, Sarabande, begins quietly and mournfully, and gradually gains in fervency. A faster middle section is a spinning dance before the return of the opening music. In the coda, the light gradually approaches. The third movement, Chorale, evokes the colors of a new dawn. The music of the first movement's struggle gradually becomes washed in the blaze of morning. Instrumentation: Organ Duration: 21' Composed: 2013 Published by: Zimbel Press.