Rochdale Parish Church Organ recital – Philip Rushforth

Philip Rushforth

ORTOA (Oldham, Rochdale & Tameside Organists’ Association) held its annual memorial recital at St Chad’s, Rochdale Parish Church on Saturday 8 October, whilst the Rochdale Town Hall organ is out of bounds due to renovation.

This was the annual Brereton Memorial fundraising concert to support the Brereton Memorial Fund which was founded in memory of Philip and Gwen Brereton who died in December 2000. They were lifelong volunteers for the Incorporated Association of Organists, the Royal College of Organists and ORTOA.

Their daughter, organiser Jude Brereton reported that this year it had awarded £1,150 in small grants to individuals attending courses and organ lessons; and larger grants to organisations that aimed to support organ and choral music across the UK.

Philip Rushforth was an admirable choice as guest soloist. He has a long association with Chester Cathedral as a chorister, organ scholar, Assistant then Director of Music. Meantime he was organ scholar at Trinity College Cambridge, assistant organist Southwell Minster and award-winning recitalist and recording artiste. In 2020, he was awarded an honorary Associateship of the Royal School of Church Music, for work of national significance.

Not just for organ aficionados, his varied programme consisted of gems that made exciting use of St Chads’ noteworthy instrument.

A bright and jolly opening with Festal Offertorium and a delicately flowing Fountain Reverie by Percy Fletcher established that this was going to be an organ recital out of the ordinary.

Philip explored the instrument’s Baroque qualities with variations on a Lutheran hymn tune by JS Bach, and then the Romantic with a meditative Cantabile by César Franck.

Alec Rowley’s Four Winds was a characteristic suite based on texts (helpfully printed in the programme): North with ‘a fine loud wind’ (Izzard); South ‘leaves hang trembling’ (Christina Rossetti); East ‘his weapon is a dagger’ (Conrad); and West was ‘full of bird’s cries’ (Masefield). This made full use of the orchestral qualities of the instrument.

Then, two attractive miniatures by the Afro-American composer, Florence Price before Philip decided to have us sashaying out of the recital with Alfred Hollins’ A Song of Sunshine with its bouncing bass and shades of ballroom and fairground, setting the mood for the nostalgia of the Knightsbridge March (BBC’s In Town Tonight, 1939-60) by Eric Coates.

Dr Joe Dawson