TOWN HALL ORGAN RECITAL

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 6871, 15 July 1909, Page 10

TOWN HALL ORGAN RECITAL

Air Alaughan Barnett, city organist, played a programme of music at tho Town Hall yesterday afternoon to a limited audience. Alany people would go a long way to hear a _ finished) musician play Tours’ Fantasia in C, a delightful inspiration that shows the master composer and which gives scope for th© expression of the instrumentalist. Bach s grand and sonorous Prelude and Fugue in G is infinitely elevating in conception and effect, the great composer’s musical thought and dignified expression being as marked! in this work as in any of his wonder-* ful contributions to his art. Rheinberger’s Idyll stands clearly out from all his other work as demonstrating an unusual attitude of mind, its do-* licacy and what might almost b© called its simplicity having apparently animated a composer who is frequently more scholastic and difficult. Air Barnett made much of this gem. Tho Prelude to “Lohengrin” was played with a most intelligent appreciation of the intention of the great Wagner., Wagner gives no idea in this remarkable prelude of the ultimate scheme and is. really apparently feeling foil inspiration. The polyphonic crashes marking the climax show the tempestuous .nature of Wagner’s best known methods and the tender finale in which the meaning is allowed to gradually dawn on the car of the listener makes the piece one of infinite us© fto the student. Lemmene’s Fanfare, as a concluding item, was brilliantly played and its optimism exhilarated. It is a pity that more people do not go along to these recitals to learn something of the great organ tha-t belongs to them.