David Price at Lunchtime Live !

David Price, Portsmouth Cathedral, November 21

It is a tribute to the good people at Portsmouth Cathedral that the show does go on, with a programme produced at short notice to replace the advertised gig. The lesser-spotted Angelina Kopyrina is a much-prized sighting for local music afficiandos but, as with the most dedicated ornithologists, one has to turn up a few times to see her once. But illness is as illness does and our combined disappointments are naturally converted into get well soon messages.

In the circumstances, the 'programme' was ready-made in that David Price was off to Salisbury Cathedral to play it there in the evening and so he was provided with a dress rehearsal. What was the more impressive was the production of the usual hard copy handout to be had in such circumstances.

It was on a theme of 'remembrance' and, for the most part, familiar music if not always familiar as organ music. It worked its way through a selection of effects, beginning with the trumpets of Fanfare for the Common Man and the woodwind, probably flutes, of an interesting transcription of The Lark Ascending. For me, a church organ is a more limited instrument than the violin, without the same capacity for nuance, but David brought the required pastoral warmth to it and effected the final disappearance of the bird convincingly if maybe less gradually.

Walton's Spitfire Prelude is necessarily rousing but also hymn-like, conflating war and religion in a way that it long has been and still can be. The gloriously frugal Maurice Duruflé's Prélude et Fugue sur le nom d'Alain meandered like his better known Requiem does, a bit, before building its own cathedral of sound. Elgar's For the Fallen fulfilled its remit in its stately pace and meditative attitude and a setting of the theme from Saving Private Ryan was further evidence of the osmosis of John Williams into the 'classical' repertoire, expanding into wider harmonies, but we will see about that. Radio 3 might be fraying at its edges into what Radio 2 once was but there's no need for Classic FM to become the ultimate arbiter of the classical canon.

Bach raises no such issues. And I'm glad to find myself not a closed shop of fixed ideas. In the hands of David Price, maybe there's more to the organ than I knew - and our own ongoing education is surely our main purpose. The Theme from All Gas and Gaiters, also known as the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, swelled and surged and hastened along the quicker tempi in the Toccata before some dance and dazzle in the Fugue. But it's Bach, isn't it, and thus almost by definition in a class of its own and couldn't help but leave us with some wow factor which is why it's usually a good idea to keep the best thing til last.

The schedule for Lunchtime Live! is all but complete for Jan-April 2025. It is various and provides us with much to look forward to. Thanks, as always, to those who make it possible.