David Hill (IAO president)
Alexandre Guilmant: March on a theme of Handel
César Franck: Pastorale
Franz Liszt: Fantasia and Fugue on B.A.C.H.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Three Impromptus
Marcel Lanquetuit: Toccata

David Hill makes a welcome return to the Albert Hall, and brings with him the music of two composers who performed in Nottingham. During an English tour Guilmant played at St Mary’s, where he described the 1872 Bishop & Starr organ as “magnifique”. His response to Handel takes the chorus “Lift up your heads, O ye gates” from Messiah and presents it grandly, interspersing it with a lively fugue. Liszt had undertaken an arduous tour of England and Ireland in 1840-41 to raise funds for a statue of Beethoven in Bonn, and his peregrinations took him to four Nottinghamshire destinations: Newstead Abbey (onetime home of his hero Lord Byron); Mansfield; Newark; and Nottingham where he played at the Assembly Room on Low Pavement whose façade still survives (the building was once a post office). Although his attempts to play the organ were undistinguished, his romantic imagination was certainly enough not only to enrich the literature of the organ but also to “move it on”, some saying that his homage to BACH was the beginning of modern music.
Franck’s legacy to the world of organ music is immense. While his disciple Tournemire might have said that his wonderful improvisations had been “garnered up by the angels” we certainly get the spirit of an improvisation in his Pastorale, said to be an evocation of the stable at Bethlehem.
Long remembered just for some light music and his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, Coleridge-Taylor’s music has come in for a welcome revival, fully justifying the faith that Elgar showed in him from the outset. His Three Impromptusare described by Binns Organ Trust patron Richard Hills as varied in colour and mood, and written with an idiomatic command of the instrument, which reinforces the impression of Coleridge-Taylor not only as a versatile presence on the Edwardian scene, but also as a composer whose music is an enduring part of our British musical heritage. Stylistically, the Three Impromptus bear a closer resemblance to the composer’s theatrical works than to those intended for the church or concert hall, a reminder of the dual original purpose of the Albert Hall as both a sacred and a secular building.
David Hill’s recital concludes with the rousing and increasingly-popular Toccata by Marcel Lanquetuit, perhaps a rather obscure French cathedral organist who however put us all in his debt by being the first organ teacher of Marcel Dupré.
The concert runs from 1.10pm to 1.55pm. Admission £5 at the door, or book online. Feel free to bring your own lunch.
Renowned for his fine musicianship, David Hill is widely respected as an organist, conductor and educator. He has held positions as organist of Westminster Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral and St John’s College, Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists when he was 17 whilst studying at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. His organ teachers were Jonathan Bielby, Derrick Cantrell and Dame Gillian Weir. He spent 4 years as organ scholar at St John’s, Cambridge under Dr George Guest. He is a past President of the Incorporated Association of Organists and from 2022-24 was President of the Royal College of Organists. He has given recitals since he was 10 and has played in many of the finest venues in the UK and abroad. Away from the organ world, David operates a busy life as a freelance musician recognised by appointments as Musical Director of The Bach Choir, London, Music Director of the Leeds Philharmonic Society, Associate Guest Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and from 2013-24 he was Professor and Principal Conductor of Schola Cantorum, Yale University. He was Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers from 2007-17. He is a regular contributor to the publication Choir and Organ.
He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Southampton University and, in 2019, an MBE for his services to music, is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, a recipient of the Royal College of Organists medal and most recently in March 2025 received the Choral Director’s Lifetime Achievement award from the Musicians’ Company.
He has made a number of discs as an organist. A CD recorded on Peterborough Cathedral organ was nominated as Critics’ Choice in the American Record Guide in 2021. In recent years he and David Ponsford have worked closely together on recording music for two harpsichords including all the Bach Trio Sonatas on Nimbus: a new disc of arrangements is due for release on Nimbus in 2025. He has recorded all the orchestral and choral works of Howells: in the summer of 2023 he recorded the complete Psalm Preludes and Master Tallis’s Testament on the organ of Durham Cathedral which has just been released on Regent Records. Howells, a lifelong fascination for Hill, arguably wrote more secular choral music than he did sacred. Hill, and his professional choir IKON, have just recorded a selection of Howell’s secular choral music, most of which has never been recorded previously and which will also be released on Hyperion in 2025.