Sachin Gunga at Lunchtime Live!

 Sachin Gunga, Portsmouth Cathedral, Sept 19th

This choice time of year has been more marvellous than ever in its latest iteration and it ain't over til it's over. The abundance of light outside was continued indoors in St. Thomas's Cathedral when, in a change of programme, Sachin Gunga stood in to provide a set on that very theme.

Bach's 'Dorian' Toccata, BWV 538, was celestial and Grace-Evangeline Mason's Light, revealing more meditative and perhaps 'light' in more ways than one before Fiat Lux, indeed, by Dubois had dance-like elements ahead of its all-encompassing ending.

I'm never less than impressed at the repertoire musicians like Sachin, and many others, find. It looks unlikely that one would ever run out of composers to find out about. Nobody with a passing interest in cricket would be taken aback to find that Bairstow, the composer of Evening Song, was from Yorkshire. Its touching melody is evocative of fading light and if I'm more in favour of cello, piano and violin as expressive instruments, these pieces made use of a wide range of stops to show many of those dimensions an organ can incorporate.

Parry's Prelude on Melcombe, a hymn tune, floated to the extent that I wondered whether to add 'diaphanous' to my stock of adjectives which never seems quite adequate. And, mehr licht, as Goethe once, reportedly finally said, Sun Dance by Bob Chilcott had a restless energy as Sachin alternated fast and slow into what might have been the high light, as it were, Prelude on East Acklam by Francis Jackson whose remarkable dates were 1917-2022. Gently reflective, it gained much by moving the main tune into flute mode towards the end although an organ remains an organ and if one wants the sound of a flute one is better served by woodwind.

I'm only joking, of course. The new BBC series on Mozart told us that he didn't really ever want it so he presumably liked the organ's impersonation of it better.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert's Nun danket alle Gott was a grandstand finish for which Now thank we all our Sachin with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, and continues to do, looking at what is to come this Autumn at Lunchtime Live! The season builds towards two local piano superstars in Karen Kingsley and Angelina Kopyrina in November but there's much to be enjoyed on our way there.