Binns Organ Series 2021 | Ben Giddens

Ben Giddens is currently Associate Organist at St Martin in the Fields. He brings us a programme of English romantic music, with a lively dash of Bach to start the second half. Beginning with John Cook’s noble Fanfare, Ben Giddens then takes us to Norwich Cathedral for Heathcote Statham’s Rhapsody on a Ground. There is a Nottingham connection with John Ireland, whose totally tuneful Miniature Suite comes next; he designed the organ now in St Martin’s Sherwood. The Ireland pieces are followed with a rousing and well-known Postlude by Ireland’s fearsome teacher Stanford. Two 'tunes' feature in the second half. Whitlock’s wistful Folk Tune followed by Norman Cocker’s wonderful outing for the loudest stop on the organ, the Tuba. Finally it’s off to Gloucester Cathedral for Herbert Howells’s homage to Tallis, the father of cathedral music, and then from Howells’s teacher Herbert Brewer the rousing Marche Héroïque which made such a fitting finale to the wedding of the Earl and Countess of Wessex.