Music for a Grand Exhibition Organ
Andrew Benson-Wilson
St Anne’s, Limehouse. Friday 2 October, 7:30

This is a rare opportunity to hear the magnificent 1850 Gray & Davison organ in the “Cathedral of the East End”, Nicholas Hawksmoor’s stunning 1730 church of St Anne’s, Limehouse. Before arriving in St Anne’s, it was displayed and won first prize at the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. I gave a series of annual recitals many years ago at about the same time as a book was published that described the organ as “decrepit but still magnificent”. The idea of those recitals was to let people hear the important organ, whatever state it was in, before it became unplayable and forgotten. It then fell off my radar until recently, despite the much-needed William Drake restoration in 2006. I am delighted to be invited back for this recital.

The programme will contrast Bach organ music published in England around the time of the organ with dramatic and descriptive music composed in France at the same time. It was a time of increasing interest in Bach in England, largely through Mendelssohn, who prepared an edition of Bach’s Orgelbüchlein that was published in 1844 in Leipzig and London. 1850 was the centenary of Bach’s death, and a group of German composers, led by Schumann, founded the Bach Gesellschaft to publish the complete works of Bach.

Sebastián de Vivanco – Missa pro defunctis, Motets
The Renaissance Singers, David Allinson
Toccata Classics, TOCC0770. 66’01

Sebastián de Vivanco’s Missa pro defunctis, a setting of the Office for the Dead, was not published and survives only in two incomplete and differing manuscript versions found in two Spanish cities many decades after Vivanco’s death in 1622. These have now been reconstructed in a critical edition by Jorge Martín. The Renaissance Singers, directed by David Allinson, are the first choir to record this magnificent work, alongside related motets by Vicanco and Cristóbal de Morales, Bernardino de Ribera, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, and Melchor Robledo. They formally launch the CD on March 28th 2026, during the Masters of Ávila: Vivanco, Victoria, Ribera concert in St Mary’s, Bourne Street, London. Shortly after that concert, the Renaissance Singers will sing in Ávila Cathedral, where Vivanco had his musical training and where one of the two manscripts survive. They will perform the Missa pro defunctis along with music by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Vivanco’s near-contemporary, and music by Bernardino de Ribera, the teacher of both composers when they were choirboys at Ávila Cathedral.

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