Lunchtime Live! at Portsmouth, Richard Dewland

Richard Dewland, Portsmouth Cathedral, Thurs 14 March.

Belatedly, but better belatedly than beneverly, and I do want to report back whenever I attend a concert even if the website is rallentando. I struck out bravely from the house last week to struggle the traditional seafront walk in wind and suggestions of rain to time my arrival in Old Portsmouth to coincide with the lunchtime recital.
Of course, it has to be admitted, the Portsmouth lunchtimes are not like Chichester's, on account of meagre attendannce and artists of international ptential, but I for one am grateful to have them to go to whenever available of a Thursday, to find that as nearby as Lee-on-Solent therre is an organist with repertoire like this and, in one of my usual catchphrases, if somebody is playing Buxtehude within travelling distance of my house, I want to be there.
Because, gladly, even if one might prefer a pianist or an ensemble, when it is an organist one hopes for Buxtehude and that's what Richard Dewland began with.
I'm not going to say BuxWV 137 is my favourite Dietrich. It didn't sound as cohesive and fully-formed as a composition as it might have been but even if he is mostly known as being John the Baptist to Bach's Christ, the one who was doing it very well before somebody else turned up and did it better, as an organist, the only picture we have attributed to being Buxtehude has him playing strings and the Complete Buxtehude, as with the Complete Bach, has far more cantatas in it than organ music. Thankfully.

Richard was mind enough to take time to explain his chronological programme, and how it moved from the opening to the 'classical' Couperin. And he knows more about it than me and no doubt has his reasons but, dead by 1733, if we need those labels (which we might not like but can be useful), I think Francois Couperin is baroque and the dearth of obvious 'classical' music for organ, by Mozart or Haydn, shouldn't be disguised by such legerdemain.
Because the next move was to a Mendelssohn sonata, definitely Romantic but still on the sensible side of the movement that, after the epitome of Romanticism of Berlioz, got out of hand. And it was the highlight of Richard's survey, thus proving that if the baroque doesn't put out its best team, it won't always win.
Now Thank We all Our God didn't seem to be the tune that I knew whereas the Frank Bridge Adagio provided the gentleness that is just as much of what organs are capable of as the ground-moving, thunderous pieces.
And Marcel Dupre's Toccata, Op. 38, no.16, which might be an opus number even Robin Ray would have struggled with, wasn't the most desolate C20th organ music one has ever heard.
All of which, I know, sounds more like scepticism than a rave review but thanks very much to Richard for doing it, for provoking such thought, and what a pleasure it is to have Portsmouth Lunchtime Live!, its stalwart dedicatees and all who sail in its ongoingness.
I will be there whenever I can