Bolero: Music for Organ 4 Hands
Douglas Lawrence and Elizabeth Anderson play organ four hands on the Melbourne Concert Hall’s French-style Casavant. Bolero gathers favourites and rarities arranged or written for two players at one console.
Nicholas Carlton composer
Benjamin Cooke composer
George Frideric Handel composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composer
Maurice Ravel composer
Franz Schubert composer
Thomas Tomkins composer
Samuel Wesley composer
The Melbourne Concert Hall boasts a grand pipe organ in the French style. The programme features arrangements of classical favourites for four hands, among them a tour-de-force reading of Ravel’s Bolero, Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, preludes and fugues by Handel, and Wesley’s Duet for Organ.
Recorded on the Casavant Frères grand concert organ, it ranges from the earliest extant music for two players at one keyboard (Tomkins and Carlton) through Handel, Mozart, Schubert and Wesley to Ravel’s famous dance, prepared from the composer’s own four-hand piano transcription.
Reviews
wonderfully innovative.
well recorded ... a resounding effect.
a banquet of goodies
Artists

Douglas Lawrence
Melbourne organist Douglas Lawrence is Director of Music at The Scots' Church and Teacher of the Organ at the University of Melbourne. He founded the Choir of Ormond College and directed it from 1982 to 2006.

Elizabeth Anderson
Elizabeth Anderson has performed on eleven international concert tours to Europe, Japan and Singapore, and is a regular guest lecturer and performer at universities and music schools throughout Australia.
Audio previews
Tracks
- Prelude–Largo 3:55
- Fuga–Allegro 4:56
- A fancy Thomas Tomkins 2:25
- A verse Nicholas Carlton 3:39
- Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525 Serenade Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 4:35
- Fugue in E minor, Op. posth. 152, D.952, für Orgel zu vier Händen Franz Schubert 3:13
- [Allegro] 6:12
- Andante 4:38
- Fuga–Alla Capella 7:40
- 1:24
- Aria 2:44
- Allegro 3:42
- Menuetto 3:11
- Rondo 4:13
- Praeludium und Fuge für Orgel zu vier Händen Adagio and Fuga Johann Georg Albrechtsberger 5:47
- Bolero (arranged from Ravel’s transcription for four hands on piano) Maurice Ravel 15:30
Zwey Fugen für zwey Personen auf einem Clavier George Frideric Handel
Duet for Organ Samuel Wesley
Canon Two in One Benjamin Cooke
Sonata in C major, K.19d Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performers
Composers

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger composed a prelude and fugue for two players at one organ.

George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was a German-born Baroque composer who settled in London and became a naturalised British subject. He is celebrated for his operas, English oratorios, organ concertos and orchestral works.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He wrote over 600 works, many of them pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic and choral music, and remains among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Maurice Ravel
Many consider Maurice Ravel a major composer for the piano as well as a genius of orchestration. It remains a surprise how few works make up his total output for the instrument: all his piano compositions can be performed in under two and a half hours.

Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. In only thirty-one years he left a vast body of work, including over six hundred Lieder, and remains among the most frequently performed composers.
Thomas Tomkins
Thomas Tomkins (1572–1656) was a Welsh-born composer of the late Tudor and early Stuart period, a leading voice in English sacred music, madrigals and keyboard writing.
Samuel Wesley
Samuel Wesley wrote organ music that still sits naturally on historic instruments: an Air for the Organ, a Fantasy, and a Duet for four hands that holds its place beside Handel and Mozart in recital programmes.
Contributors
Photography
Howard Birnstihl
Howard Birnstihl is a photographer whose cover, exterior and general photography appears across many Move Records releases from the late 1970s into the 2000s.
Where to listen
Bolero: Music for Organ 4 Hands is available for streaming through Spotify and Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.
Bolero: Music for Organ 4 Hands is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.
Product details
- Catalogue number
- MD 3180
- List price
- $25.00 AUD
- Total playing time
- 77 minutes 44 seconds
- Recording Engineer
- Martin Wright
Vaughan McAlley - Editing Engineer
- Vaughan McAlley
- Mastering Engineer
- Martin Wright
- Venue
- Melbourne Concert Hall
- Credit
- Howard Birnstihl
- Release date
- 1996
- Musical work
copyright - © 1996 Move Records
- Sound recording
copyright - ℗ 1996 Move Records
- Categories
- Classical, Organ
- Genre
- Organ
- Barcode
- EAN 9314574318029
Related recordings

The Choir of Ormond College Live
A live retrospective for the Choir of Ormond College’s twenty-first year, gathering concert recordings from 1985 to 2000 under Douglas Lawrence, from Britten’s Festival Te Deum and Fauré’s Requiem to Bach, Palestrina, Poulenc and lively encores.

Beatus Vir
Recorded live on their 1999 European tour, the Choir of Ormond College under Douglas Lawrence presents small-scale sacred works in up to eight parts by Palestrina, Gesualdo, Handl, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Stanford and Rheinberger.

Kodály Missa Brevis
Recorded on their 1997 European tour in Northern Italy and Germany, the Choir of Ormond College sings Kodály’s Missa Brevis, with works by Tye, Howells and Bach.

Music from Heaven
The Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, in a highly acclaimed programme of unaccompanied sacred works by Allegri, Byrd, Poulenc, Britten, Barber and J.S. Bach.

Gold
The Australian Chamber Choir, directed by Douglas Lawrence, performs works by eight Australian composers. From Gordon Kerry’s Shakespeare setting to Malcolm Williamson’s English Eccentrics, the programme turns individual voices into pure gold.

Keys to Heaven
The Australian Chamber Choir opens with the first recording of Agata della Pietà’s cantata Ecce nunc, written in eighteenth-century Venice by an orphan of the Ospedale della Pietà and reconstructed by Elizabeth Anderson. Sacred works by Palestrina and Allegri complete the programme.