Orb and Sceptre: Coronation March, 1953

ISBN-13: 9780193532854 / Angielski

William Walton;Robert Gower

Recenzje

This is an individual re-print of the arrangement that appeared in OUP's A Walton Organ Album (ed. Robert Gower) in 1996 . . . it is worth comparing it with William McKie's transcription, published in the year of the Coronation . . . Inevitably, perhaps, there are passages where McKie's and Gower's solutions are identical; but there are plenty where they are not. In essence, Gower's transcription does not contain as much of the musical detail at McKie's . . . But this is not to suggest that Gower's arrangement is an over-simplification of the music. Indeed, the art of transcribing orchestral pieces for the organ lies in knowing what to omit . . . most organists will find that there is quite enough in the Gower to give a very satisfactory rendering of Walton's intentions, without the virtuoso demands of the McKie . . . In conclusion, this reissue of this very playable arrangement is welcome . . .

O autorze

On retirement from a teaching career spent successively at St Paul's Boys' School, Barnes, Radley College, Oxfordshire, and Glenalmond College, Perthshire, (where he was also a Housemaster and Senior Tutor), Robert Gower worked as Organist at St Barnabas Catholic Cathedral, Nottingham, before moving briefly to the most northerly parish in the Church of England at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Returning to Scotland so as to be nearer to family, he is now Director of Music at Dundee Parish Church. Robert's commitment to English 20th-century repertoire is reflected through his founding and leadership of the Percy Whitlock Trust between 1981 and 2016 and in his longstanding Chairmanship of the Gerald Finzi Charitable Trust, from which he retired in 2022. He enjoys transcribing music for organ (with a wide range recently embracing both Leroy Anderson and Maxwell Davies) and in liturgical composition, completing a three-year cycle of responsorial psalms for the Church Music Society.