St Martin’s Church, Brasted, with its fine organ and sympathetic acoustic, was, on Tuesday 25 January 2011 once again the venue for a second concert entitled the ‘King of Instruments’.

An annual showcase for the school’s organ pupils, one hopes that it will become sufficiently established to merit the description of a series, even if only occurring once a year. A school without a chapel, and perhaps a daily service with its attendant organ solo and organ-accompanied music, is somewhat deprived of exposure to the music of this most varied of instruments, whose greatest champion, Johann Sebastian Bach, was the chosen focus of this year’s concert. Fittingly, the concert opened with Bach‘s magisterial and exacting Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, which received an assured and well-paced performance from the hands, and not least the feet, of Alexander Ying, the organ-scholar elect of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge.

It was interesting to hear further organ performances from a clutch of pupils who made their debut last year: Hamish Oliver tackled Handel’s Minuet in D with confidence, more than finding his feet (literally and metaphorically), and, one suspects, enjoying being allowed to make more noise! Benedict Durrant and Samir Yep-Manzano both presented smaller scale pieces by Bach, Benedict showing that he, too, is now tackling repertoire which includes the pedals, and Samir playing with a promising sense of style and delivery. The Bach chorale-based piece offered by Natalie Chau in a manuals-only performance provided an instructive reminder that the King of Instruments can speak with a beguiling, as well as a regal, tone of voice.

The long association of the organ with places of worship, and thus the sacred inspiration behind much organ repertoire, can lead to our forgetting the organ’s place in the secular concert hall. William Walton’s incidental music for the film Henry V has been successfully transcribed for the organ, and the three movements played by Alexander McBride received sympathetic performances. His well-chosen registrational colours somehow enhanced the ability of this mid-20th century score to evoke a much earlier period.

Woven into the programme were several fine choral and instrumental performances by a variety of groups, with Bach being represented by movements from his Orchestral Suite in B minor (solo flautist Ben McCarthy), a cantata movement arrangement played by the Flute Choir, and a complete cantata splendidly performed by the Sennocke Consort. Oliver Clarke (baritone) delivered a captivatingly mellifluous account of a solo song by Henry Purcell.

Various choral items originally intended for last December’s Carol Service (frustratingly disrupted by a lengthy power cut) also enhanced this January evening. Whether the product of human lungs or organ bellows, the quality and variety of the evening’s music making could only make one concur with these words set to music by the great Johann Sebastian: ‘Alles, was Odem hat, lobe den Herrn’ (‘All that hath breath, praise the Lord’.)

A retiring collection was taken in aid of Hospice in the Weald.

World Premiere

The first half of the concert ended with the world premiere of Concert Study for Organ, written by local composer and former Sevenoaks School teacher Peter Young. The piece was written for Peter’s former student Alex Ying, following last year’s King of Instruments concert, and Alex fittingly gave its first performance. In the tradition of the French school of organist-composers, in particular Maurice Durufle, the piece combined a toccata-like opening, chorale-like sections and bravura improvisatory gestures with fugal counterpoint and chromaticism, leading the audience to the composition’s momentous close, the brilliance of the organ’s mixtures underpinned by a final flourish from the pedals. A workout for both organ and organist, the piece was a fitting celebration and demonstration of the King of Instruments.