What an interesting
character Healy Willan was. He was born
in London in 1880 and grew up in the
Anglo-Catholic church tradition. He
emigrated to Canada in 1913, in order
to take up a post - Head of Theory at
the Toronto Conservatory - substantial
enough for him to be able to feed his
family. Canada seemingly adopted him
as one of their own, and he was frequently
referred to as the ‘Dean of Canadian
Composers’.
Willan’s famous ‘Introduction,
Passacaglia and Fugue’ alone propels
him into the bracket of the most remarkable
composers to write symphonic literature
for the organ. The piece is very well
known, but never fails to make an impact,
so tragic is its overall mood, so creative
its writing, and so colourful its invention.
Gillian Weir likens it to a Royal funeral,
a wonderfully apt image. Despite its
fame in English speaking countries,
I was astonished to hear it, played
by the great Ben van Oosten in, of all
places, the St Bavo in Haarlem in October
of last year. It was, nonetheless, a
truly astounding performance.
Here, Patrick Wedd’s
performance of the work is good; he
maintains the tension well, and his
control is excellent, as is his use
of the organ. For me it lacks the last
ounce of drama which Gillian Weir for
example coaxes so tellingly out of the
big Aeolian-Skinner organ in the acoustic-less
First Church of Christ, Scientist in
Boston on Priory PRCD 751. It’s a question
of timing, of capturing the different
moods of the work in a way which holds
the listener. Wedd is good, Weir is
fantastic.
I was interested above
all though to hear what else I have
been missing among the lesser known
works of Willan. The Prelude and Fugue
is a good piece, with an exciting build-up
of tension in the slightly over-long
(double) fugue and clever quotations
of the first material at different points.
The 2nd Passacaglia and Fugue
is a late work and has much less quality
than the first I feel. Just compare
the endings of the two pieces! The rest
of the disc is made up mostly of the
shorter liturgical pieces of the sort
which made up the majority of Willan’s
later compositional output. These range
from pleasant pre-Evensong wanderings,
(‘Aria’, Christe Redemptor’
from the Preludes on Plainchant Melodies)’
to the slightly banal, (Urbs Jerusalem
beata from the same). I did enjoy
the Epilogue with its very English
sense of drive.
The organ is rather
similar to that played by Willan himself
at the church of St Paul’s Bloor Street
in Toronto. The instrument in the Église
Saint-Jean Baptiste in Montréal
was built by the redoubtable Casavant
firm in 1914 and restored by them in
1995.A four manual instrument of some
68 stops, with three enclosed divisions,
its concept represents the interesting
Canadian synthesis of French and English
ideals. It contains more mixtures than
most organs of its vintage, and a rather
strange Positif Expressive:
16,8,8,4,4,2,II, II-V,
8 (Clarinette)
and Solo Expressive:
8 (stentorphone) 8
8 4 2 II (Clochettes) 8 (Cor anglais)
8 (Musette).
The instrument is aesthetically
very well matched to Willan’s music
then, but has a rather different character
to the English organs on which we most
often hear it played. The mixtures are
for me a little hard sounding, the chorus
reeds rather French (but not terribly
beautiful). The best of the organ is
its variety of soft 8’ colour, listen
to those strings at the beginning of
the Introduction! This is, it must be
said a style of organ building probably
unique to Canada.
Patrick Wedd plays
well throughout with excellent technique
and masterful control of the instrument’s
resources. This is an interesting collection,
and given the price is well worth having.
Chris Bragg
Patrick Wedd, organ 
