Benjamin Alard - Organ Recital at Musée de Provins et du Provinois (France, 29 April, 2021)

Organ Recital at Musée de Provins et du Provinois (France, 29 April, 2021) - Benjamin Alard, Castle Grant Chamber Organ by John Byfield II, London 1766. (Collection: Musée Instrumental de Provins on loan to the Musée de Provins et du Provinois)

Programme
John Blow: Voluntary in C Major/Ut Majeur, Voluntary in A minor/La mineur.
Henry Purcell: Voluntary in G Major/Sol Majeur.
John Blow: Morlake ground.
Georg Friedrich Händel: Concerto in D minor/Sol mineur Op. 7 N° 4 HWV 309.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita on the Choral “O Gott du frommer Gott” BWV 767.

Public Première on Wednesday, June 9, 2021 | 2:30 pm (EDT/UTC-4) | Organ Mini Festival Streaming on bemf.org - Boston Early Music Festival.
Video copyright: All rights reserved. Film director: Julien Cadilhac ; Camera operator: Tanguy Alanou, Nicolas Le borgne ; Sound engineer: Alban Moraud ; Technical resources: voir(e)même, Alban Moraud Audio, Sevel Ideas.

Organ information: The chamber organ by John Byfield II is the best preserved and most thoroughly documented English chamber organ of its period and one of the masterpieces of European instrument-making of the 18th century. It was delivered from London by sea to Sir James Grant at his castle in the Scottish Highlands in August 1767 as a gift for his young wife Jean, a talented musician. It remained undisturbed in the castle until 1958. It is typical of the type of instrument for which Handel composed his organ concertos and, uniquely, retains its original temperament intact at a pitch very close to that of Handel’s own tuning fork of 1751.
John Byfield II was a member of a dynasty of organ builders originally from Saale in North Germany. His father worked with ‘Father Smith’ on the Great Organ at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Byfields’ partners Richard Bridge and Abraham Jordan supplied a number of organs to Boston, almost certainly incorporating Byfield pipework, including those in the Trinity Church (1744) and the King’s Chapel (1756) as did their rival John Snetzler who supplied an organ similar to the present instrument to the Deblois Concert Hall in Boston in 1763.*
Byfield was renowned for the quality of his pipework. The exquisite reedy ‘Twelfth’ stop heard in the Blow Voluntary in A Minor in this recital is one of the most perfect expressions of the organ builder’s art.
*Eighteenth-Century Organs and Organ Building in New England by Barbara Owen - Pub: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol 54 [https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/...]

Next concert in Provins - France : May 18, 2024 at 21:00
https://provins.net/decouvrir-visiter...
Programme
John Blow: Voluntary en Ut Majeur, Voluntary en La mineur.
Henry Purcell: Voluntary en Sol Majeur.
John Blow: Morlake ground.
Georg Friedrich Haendel: Concerto en Sol mineur Op. 7 N° 4 HWV 309.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita sur le Choral O Gott, du frommer Gott en do mineur” BWV 767.
Benjamin Alard, orgue John Byfield II, Londres 1766 - Collection du Musée instrumental de Provins et du Provinois, France.

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