A jewel in the crown. That’s how the organ of All Saints Cheltenham is described in our program, as one of the “jewels in the crown of instruments,” but I believe you could say that about the entire church, which is lavishly decorated in Victorian French Gothic style, and is known as a place where Gustav Holst made music and his father designed the organ. All Saints was the site of today’s organ recital by Polina Sosnina.
Polina Sosnina played a lot of familiar favorites of mine: Komm, Gott Schöpfer, heiliger Geist, BWV 667; Choral varié sur le Veni Creator (Maurice Duruflé); Sonata in D (Felix Mendelssohn); Choral in B minor (César Franck); Passacaglia (Dmitri Shostakovich); and Passacaglia and Fugue, BWV 582 (Bach).
On the way to All Saints, we passed the birthplace of composer Gustavo Holst, and only had a few minutes to take a few pictures.
We ended up parking the car some distance away and after the concert, tried to remember where the car park was. We had eaten at an Indian restaurant nearby so we checked the receipt for the address. Unfortunately we found out this was not correct, because Google maps led us to another restaurant altogether! It even led us down this narrow path!
We finally found the car park and headed back to Gloucester Cathedral for Evensong sung by the three Cathedral Choirs, this time with most of the music by William Byrd. Because of the huge crowd we ended up sitting in the transept watching a video monitor of the choir. I think we actually had better seats than the people inside the chapel— the sound was simply glorious even though we could only see the choir on the monitor.
The evening concert was called “A Song on the End of the World,” with a focus towards music telling the horrors of war and violence. I have to admit that my favorite work of the evening was “Tintagel” by Arnold Bax, which brought “the force and beauty of nature to life in its depiction of the Cornish cliffs. You might remember that Joan Ishibashi and I were in Tintagel in 2019 and I thought the music perfectly described the rugged beauty of the landscape.
