picture: I play for Margaret Phillips on the Frobenius organ at The Queen’s College, Oxford /Simon Williams
Slightly daunting to have a lesson on Bach with Margaret Phillips after her exemplary Bach recital the night before – and on the same organ too. But she was generous in sharing the registrations she used, and many other small elements that go to make up her outstanding performances.
Great to Pedal is an English invention, she admonished one of us – this organ is perfectly balanced throughout and doesn’t need it. (This organ being the 1965 Frobenius at The Queens College, Oxford, a typical organ reform movement instrument, with individual casework for all the divisions, and the pedals in completely separate towers either side.) When someone tentatively suggested a registration of 8′ + 2′ she said that they probably didn’t use it in Bach’s time – it doesn’t really work on historic instruments.
Much of the lesson was taken up by finding suitable speeds for pieces, and maintaining them. Any Bach fugue is basically allegro, said Margaret – and trills are often easier if the piece is that little bit faster. A draggy pedal line doesn’t help – keep the notes short – a good way to get a sense of the level of articulation needed between the notes is to play the pedal line on a manual, with just one finger.
We spent some time on the suspirans figure (a three note upbeat) – which occurs all over Bach, for example in Leibster Jesu, wir sind hier BWV 731, which I was playing. Make a tiny lift BEFORE the strong beat she said. This feels slightly counter intuitive, but she’s absolutely right, and I’m practising this in now.
Listening to Margaret, Thomas Trotter, Graham Barber playing this week, it’s tempting to believe that they must inhabit a sunlit plateau free of the worries that bedevil lesser organists. I asked Margaret how she managed to keep her playing so intense and precise right through to the end of the recital. ”The B minor Prelude and Fugue (BWV544) I have played a lot of times”, she said, “so it was a good one to end on. And the chorale preludes in the middle of the recital were slow, so they gave me a little bit of a breather.”
Earlier in the course I asked Thomas Trotter how he knew a piece was ready for performance, and wouldn’t have weak moments. “Well I’m City Organist for Birmingham, so I can try things out at Town Hall Recitals where I’m not nervous of making a mistake” he said (!) But he did add – yes, it is a problem for all of us. His advice to us was to record ourselves to add a bit of pressure, play pieces as voluntaries if we are church organists: – there are no magic answers it seems, just commonsense and lots of practice.
Margaret Phillips studied with Ralph Downes and Marie-Claire Alain, and quickly gained an international reputation as a soloist after her Royal Festival Hall debut. Alongside her busy concert career she has been a member of the Council of the Royal College of Organists, and President of the Incorporated Association of Organists. She is currently Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music in London. She regularly gives masterclasses at home and abroad and has served on international competition juries. Her critically acclaimed recordings include the completely organ works of Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens and Stanley, and in March 2012 the final volume of her recordings of the complete organ works of Bach was released – the first two CDs received 5 star reviews and have been hailed as some of the finest performances of Bach chorale preludes on disc. Margaret’s website is here.
