APO Celebrates 100 Years of the Auckland Town Hall Organ

APO Celebrates 100 Years of the Auckland Town Hall Organ

The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Auckland Town Hall organ in the fourth of this year’s APN News & Media Premier Series concerts.

The recently restored organ is the featured instrument in Guilmant’s Organ Symphony No.1. Although less well known today, Felix-Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) was a superstar organist and composer in his native France as well as the rest of Europe and America, performing to crowds numbering in the tens of thousands.

Our own superstar organist for this 14 April concert is Robert Costin. No stranger to New Zealand, in the mid-1990s Mr Costin held organist posts at St Paul’s Cathedral Wellington and Auckland Holy Trinity Cathedral. He has since performed around the world in venues such as Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Mr Costin has made many lauded recordings, with International Record Review saying of his Howells recital that “few CDs approach the excellence of performance of this issue”; his CD of Liszt and Reubke, made using the organ of Wellington Town Hall, received five stars out of five in The Organ magazine. The release of Mr Costin’s new recording is timed to coincide with this concert.

The fizz and fireworks of nineteenth century French organ music are complemented by the final work of the night’s programme, Elgar’s Symphony No 1.

Elgar was 50 when it was completed, and given its instant success the wait was clearly worth it. Within a year or so of its debut in 1908, the symphony had received more than 100 performances.

Stirring, lyrical and possessed of a rapturous Adagio section (said to have moved the symphony’s dedicatee and original conductor, Hans Richter, to tears), Elgar’s work is the embodiment of English composition at the turn of the last century.

The APO is led in this concert by Garry Walker. A rising star on the European scene, and winner of the Leeds Conductors Competition, Mr Walker has played with numerous leading orchestras, and was until recently Permanent Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic, a position created especially for him.

Who: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, with Robert Costin (organ) and Garry Walker (conductor)
What: APN News & Media Premier Series 4: Organ & Orchestra. Featuring Haydn, Il Ritorno di Tobia (overture); Guilmant Organ Symphony No.1, op.42; Elgar Symphony No.1, op.55
Where: Auckland Town Hall
When: Thursday 14 April
Book: THE EDGE 09 357 3355 or www.buytickets.co.nz

Quick Facts:

- Guilmant was part of a 19th century tradition of French organ composers that also included the likes of Franck and Widor.

- Guilmant regularly attracted audiences of 10,000 or more to his organ concerts. He was particularly popular in America.

- Guilmant died in 1911, the same year Auckland Town Hall opened – complete with its organ.
- The Town Hall organ has more than 5300 pipes. The largest is almost 10 metres long, and weighs 120kg.

- Elgar completed only two symphonies. A third was being worked on at the time of his death, and Elgar left extensive sketches. These were completed by Anthony Payne in 1997, and the work has been recorded several times and is played with reasonable regularity.

- Scottish-born conductor Garry Walker is a keen mountain climber – he’s climbed every mountain in Scotland higher than 3000 feet. There are 284 of those.

- The concert coincides with the release of Robert Costin’s new CD. The Excellent Art of Voluntary: 17th Century English Organ Music from Pembroke College is released on Atoll records.

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