Duncan Honeybourne - Plays The 1873 Bevington Organ At Holy Trinity [CD]

Duncan Honeybourne is best known as a pianist, and his many recordings reflect his long association with British piano music of the 20th and 21st centuries. But he was also a church organist for 30 years, and has given recitals at Brecon and Truro Cathedrals and Ieper (Ypres) Cathedral in Belgium. At thirteen, Honeybourne's first job was a village organist in Dorset and this release features him playing the Bevington chamber organ in the parish church at Bincombe, Dorset. Part of the church dates from the twelfth century, with most of the remainder having been constructed in the fifteenth. The single manual organ was built by the London firm of Bevington and Sons in 1873 and supplied at a cost of GBP105 to the neighbouring parish of Broadwey. It was moved to Bincombe in 1903. Honeybourne, whose 3x great grandparents were married in the church in 1831, writes that he has chosen a recital programme "to show the strengths of this tiny instrument and to evoke it's rustic and timeless setting." The recording opens with some vivacious and masterly early English keyboard writing by Bull and Byrd: "an obvious choice for the Bincombe organ", comments Honeybourne. Bach's charming Pastorella also works well, as do pieces by Buxtehude, John Stanley and Maurice Durufle. There is a nod towards several West Country composers, notably Exeter-born Kate Boundy and Kate Loder of Bath, whose six voluntaries receive their premiere recording. Also recorded for the first time is Greville Cooke's tranquil Threnody. Cooke, a pianist, composer, poet, priest and professor at the RAM, lived in Dorset in his last years but this piece was written during his time as Rector of Buxted, East Sussex. The recital ends with one of Joubert's Short Preludes on English Hymn Tunes, composed for the new chamber organ at Peterborough Cathedral in 1990. Honeybourne notes that "this incisive ramble around a familiar French carol lends itself to an organ of the proportions and sonority of the Bincombe instrument."