Edwin Henry Lemare
Edwin Lemare wrote and transcribed for the late-Romantic concert organ: display pieces and orchestral arrangements built to show the colour, weight and theatre of the great town-hall instruments. His Toccata di Concerto and Concertstück still light up grand-organ programmes.
Much of the original music is light in intent and high in craft, written to parade stops, dynamics and sheer scale. The Concertstück takes tarantella form; the Gavotte à la Cour offers courtly charm; the familiar Andantino in D flat (later Moonlight and Roses) asks the player to work three manuals at once. As a transcriber he brought Wagner and other orchestral scores to places without a resident orchestra, and his own Home, Sweet Home arrangement sits easily beside the fireworks. He helped design the Melbourne Town Hall organ, a natural home for this repertoire.
Compositions by Edwin Henry Lemare appear on
Concert Organ Masterpieces
Masterpieces from the concert organ repertoire, played by Thomas Heywood on the restored Hill organ at St John’s Church, Toorak. The programme draws on his 1997 Grand Organ Concerts at the church.
Just Married: Organ Music for a Wedding
A compilation of history's most celebrated organ music, long popular at weddings. The insert notes usefully group the tracks as processionals, recessionals and music for the signing of the register.
Melbourne Sounds Grand
Thomas Heywood’s first commercial recording presents the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Concert Organ in a grand-concert programme of virtuoso showpieces and transcriptions, chosen to display its orchestral colour, dynamics and power.
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