David Briggs

As a virtuoso organist and a composer, do you identify with the role JS Bach played, or do you feel your life as a travelling concert artist is fundamentally different?

You may say I’m a virtuoso, but I imagine what I can do is a shadow of what Bach was capable of. There’s evidence that Bach could do with his feet what the best organists can only do with their hands! One cannot underestimate the significance of his faith, either: I do believe he had a hotline to his creator. There is a mystery at the heart of his works, the music is always greater than the sum of its parts.

He was rooted within his institution, obtuse, I imagine, with a hyper-focus on composing. I worked at Gloucester Cathedral for eight years so I know a little of what the music director’s job entails: but since I was 12 I have wanted to be an organist and a composer, not a choir director, so my current life suits me better. I do believe Bach was always looking to the future, imagining all the possibilities, so he would have probably loved aspects of my life, particularly the international travel. Not sure how he would have coped with the secularisation of society, though…

What informed this particular choice of pieces?

Roger Wright and I felt it would be good to include transcriptions of Bach, as Bach himself was a great transcriber – and this concert in some ways reflects and mirrors the concert that follows, in which listeners will be able to hear 20^th century orchestral transcriptions of Bach. I’ve included a mix of indigenous organ pieces, newer transcriptions and, in the case of the Choral Prelude ‘Wachet auf’, Bach’s own transcription. In a sense, in both concerts we’re hearing Bach’s music through different prisms.

You have made your own arrangement of Bach’s third Orchestral Suite – what did you try to achieve and what were the challenges?

I enjoy turning the organ into a symphonic animal. The challenge of making an arrangement like this is knowing what to leave out, to stick to what Bach wrote but to get the voicings and the part writing to work. I’ve tried to emulate what a talented pupil of Bach’s might have done, but there’s no point writing it as if for a 1650 organ. I think Bach would have been intrigued by the dramatic and colouristic possibilities of an organ like this one in the Royal Albert Hall.

Tell us about Virgil Fox, who transcribed the Chorale ‘Komm, süsser Tod’?

Fox was an American organist, whose fame was at its height in the mid-20^th century. He really brought the organ to the masses: there’s a remarkable recording of him playing on the colossal Wannamaker Store organ in Philadelphia, the largest in the world, and I’ve never heard an organ sound so much like an orchestra – but of course it sounds like Fox, not Bach! Stainton Taylor’s transcription of Cantata No. 208 (Sheep may safely graze) is luxurious and rich, though gentler. Bach’s music is inherently so strong it can sound great in all these different guises.

Your summer calendar includes playing for the silent movies Nosferatu and Phantom of the Opera, plus Widor in Paris. That’s quite a varied schedule…

I improvise for about 12 different silent movies, and it’s great fun. Organists used to make their living doing this but I take a post-Romantic approach to the music, weaving in Strauss, Dupré, Ravel and Mahler. I use well-known themes to hold the audience, and of course there’s a lot of humour involved, and anticipation. I’m watching the film on screen in front of me. I’m all for using the great cathedrals for these sort of music events, thinking outside the box. Going back to Paris and playing on the Cavallé-Coll organ in Notre Dame is a special treat: it’s the best organ in the world, playing it is like driving a Maserati. And of course the acoustics and atmosphere are unique: that cavernous space filled with damp, ancient stone, garlic and gaulois!